Leaves From The Notebook Of A Tamed Cynic

To

my friends

and former co-workers
in

Bethel Evangelical Chun
Detroit^ Michigan

LEAVES

FROM THE NOTEBOOK
OF A TAMED CYNIC

hy REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Meridian Tannic

A LIVING AGE BOOK ( MEKIDIAN )

Published by The World Publishing Company
2231 West noth Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio
First Meridian printing July 1957
Fifth printing January 1964
Copyright © 1929 by Reinhold Niebuhr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduc i
in any form without written permission from the publishe
except for brief passages included in a review
appearing in a newspaper or magazine.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 57-10846
Printed in the United States of America 5WP164

PREFACE

1956

An author is naturally embarrassed to have a
book, first pubhshed more than a quarter cen-
tury ago, re-issued and presumably reaching
some new readers who will be astounded by the
dated character of the observations in the book.
My own embarrassment is the more acute be-
cause these autobiographical notes are more
than ordinarily dated. They were prompted by
the experiences of a young minister serving his
first parish in the growing city of Detroit. Some
of the observations may have a faint historical
significance inasfar as they throw hght upon the
social climate of a large urban center, the seat
of the growing automobile industry in a day in

8

whicii tLe unions, which now dominate the )ic-
ture, were still unheard of.

But the notes are not primarily a social d cu-
ment. As the self-revelations of a young pa son
they freely express the then typical notior of
hberal Protestantism before the whole hi sral
world view was challenged by world eventi Of
course they were written after the first w rid
war. But that war did not essentially chall< ige
the hberal culture of America. It required a ie-
pression and another world war to corrodi an
optimism in America which was lost in Eu: >pe
after the first world war. There are some inc ca-
tions in these notes of uneasiness about he
general religious presuppositions which in-
formed a youthful ministry. But on the w ole
there are no serious evidences of a revolt w ich
occurred in the soul of the author and of n ny
of his contemporaries, only a few years after he
book was published. Thus indisputable evid< ice
is offered for the fact that we are all, what' /er
our pretensions, the children of our day nd
hour. What we think of man and God, of sin nd
salvation, is partly prompted by the compara ive
comforts or discomforts in which we hve. ! is
a very sobering reflection on the lack of tr ns-
cendence of the human spirit over the flu of
historical change.

Perhaps too much has been said about he

embarrassment of the author because of the
“dated” character of his views. The notes are
primarily a record of the experiences of a young
minister and they wiU have interest primarily to
other young ministers. I have no embarrassment
about the fact that the notes reveal the satisfac-
tion which one may have in preaching the gospel
and “tending the flock” in a local parish. And I
hope that they may also reveal some of the
variegated problems and issues which confront
the Christian ministry. After a quarter of a cen-
tury in academic life, I can still understand why
I was so reluctant to leave the local parish. Aca-
demic life seems highly specialized in compari-
son with the life of a parish priest meeting
human problems on all levels of weal and woe,
and trying to be helpful in fashioning a “com-
munity of grace” in the barren anonymity of a
large city.

I regret the immaturity with which I ap-
proached the problems and tasks of the ministry
but I do not regret the years devoted to the par-
ish.

Reinhold NiEBima

PREFACE AND APOLOGY

Most of the reflections recorded in these pages
were prompted by experiences of a local Chris-
tian pastorate. Some are derived from wider
contacts with the churches and colleges of the
country. For the sake of giving a better clue to
the meaning of a few of them, it may be neces-
sary to say that they have as their background
a pastorate in an industrial community in which
the natural growth of the city made the expan-
sion of a small church into a congregation of
considerable size, in a period of thirteen years,
inevitable. By the time these lines reach the
reader the author will have exchanged his pas-
toral activities for academic pursuits.

It must be confessed in all candor that some
of the notes, particularly the later ones, were
written after it seemed fairly certain that they
would reach the eye of the pubhc in some
form or other. It was therefore psychologically
diflBcult to maintain the type of honesty which

12

PREFACE AND APOLOGY

characterizes the self-revelations of a private
diary. The reader must consequently be warned
(though such a warning may be superfluous) to
discoimt the unconscious insincerities which no
amount of selE-discipline can eliminate from
words which are meant for the public.

The notes which have been chosen for publi-
cation have been picked to illustrate the typical
problems of a modern minister in an industrial
and urban community and what seem to be
more or less typical reactions of a young minis-
ter to such problems. Nothing new or startling
was attempted in the pastorate out of which
these reflections grew. If there is any justiflca-
tion for their publication, it must lie in the
light they may throw upon the problems of the
modern church and ministry rather than upon
any possible solutions of these problems.

The book is published with an uneasy con-
science, the author half hoping that the pub-
lishers would make short shrift of his indiscre-
tions by throttling the book. Some of the notes
are really too inane to deserve inclusion in any
published work, and they can be justified only
as a background for those notes which deal
critically with the problems of the modem min-
istry. The latter are unfortunately, in many in-
stances, too impertinent to be in good taste, and
I lacked the grace to rob them of their imper-

13

tinence without destroying whatever critical
value they might possess. I can only emphasize
in extenuation of the spirit which prompted
them, what is confessed in some of the criti-
cisms, namely, that the author is not uncon-
scious of what the critical reader will himself
divine, a tendency to be most critical of that in
other men to which he is most tempted himself.

The modern ministry is in no easy position;
for it is committed to the espousal of ideals (pro-
fessionally, at that) which are in direct conflict
with the dominant interests and prejudices of
contemporary civilization. This conflict is no-
where more apparent than in America, where
neither ancient sanctities nor new social insights
tend to qualify, as they do in Europe, the heed-
less economic forces of an industrial era.

Inevitably a compromise must be made, or is
made, between the rigor of the ideal and the
necessities of the day. That has always been the
case, but the resulting compromises are more
obvious to an astute observer in our own day
than in other generations. We are a world-con-
scious generation, and we have the means at
our disposal to see and to analyze the brutalities
which characterize men s larger social relation-
ships and to note the dehumanizing effects of a
civilization which unites men mechanically and
isolates them spiritually.

14

PREFACE AND APOLOGY

Our knowledge may ultimately be the means
of our redemption, but for the moment it seems
to rob us of self-respect and respect for one
another. Every conscientious minister is easily
tempted to a sense of futility because we live
our lives microscopically while we are able to
view the scene in which we labor telescopically.
But the higher perspective has its advantages
as well as its dangers. It saves us from too much
self-deception. Men who are engaged in the
espousal of ideals easily fall into sentimentality.
From the outside and the disinterested perspec-
tive this sentimentality may seem like hypocrisy.
If it is only sentimentality and self-deception,
viewed at closer range, it may degenerate into
real hypocrisy if no determined effort is made
to reduce it to a minimum.

It is no easy task to deal realistically with the
moral confusion of our day, either in the pulpit
or the pew, and avoid the appearance, and pos-
sibly the actual peril, of cynicism. An age which
obscures the essentially unethical nature of its
dominant interests by an undue preoccupation
with the application of Christian principles in
limited areas, may, as a matter of fact, deserve
and profit by ruthless satire. Yet the pedagogical
merits of satire are dubious, and in any event its
weapons will be foresworn by an inside critic
for both selfish and social reasons. For reasons

15

of self-defense he will be very gentle in dealing
with limitations which his own life illustrates.

But he will be generous in judgment for an-
other reason. His intimate view of the facts will
help him to see that what an outside critic may
call hyprocrisy may really be honest, because of
its unconscious sentimentality and self-decep-
tion. When virtues are used to hide moral hmita-
tions the critic ought not to be too sme that the
virtues are bogus. Sometimes they are. But some-
times they merely represent the effort of honest
but short-sighted men to preserve the excellen-
cies of another day long after these have ceased
to have relevancy for the problems of our own
day; or sometimes they spring from efforts to
apply the Christian ideal to limited and imme-
diate areas of conduct where apphcation is fairly
easy. In such cases no one can be absolutely
sure whether it is want of perspective or want
of courage which hinders the Christian idealist
from applying his ideals and principles to the
more remote and the more diflBcult relationships.

That the ministry is particularly tempted to
the self-deceptions which afflict the moral life
of Christians today is obvious. If it is dangerous
to entertain great moral ideals without attempt-
ing to realize them in life, it is even more peril-
ous to proclaim them in abstract terms without
bringing them into juxtaposition with the spe-

l6 PREFACE AND APOLOGY

cific social and moral issues of the day. The min-
ister's premature satisfaction in the presentation
of moral ideals is accentuated by the fact that
he is a leader in a community in which appre-
ciative attitudes are on the whole more preva-
lent than critical ones. The minister is there-
fore easily fooled by extravagant conceptions
of his own moral stature, held by admiring
parishioners. If he could realize how much of
this appreciation represents transferred religious
emotion he could be more realistic in analyzing
himself. And if he could persuade himself to
speak of moral ideals in terms of specific issues
and contemporary situations, he would prob-
ably prompt currents of critical thought which
would destroy the aura which invests his per-
son with premature sanctity.

If a minister wants to be a man among men
he need only to stop creating devotion to ab-
stract ideals which every one accepts in theory
and denies in practice, and to agonize about
their validity and practicability in the social
issues which he and others face in our present
civilization. That immediately gives his minis-
try a touch of reality and potency and robs it of
an artificial prestige which it can afford to dis-
pense with, and is bound to be stripped of, the
kind of prestige which is the prerogative of
priests and professional holy men.

17

The number of ministers who are perfectly
realistic about their tasks and who are sincerely
anxious to help the modem generation find it-
self, not only in the intricate problems of the
personal life but in the moral and social com-
plexities of an industrial society, is much larger
than the critics outside of the church are able
to know and willing to concede. If I have any
regrets, it is that these pages, preoccupied with
criticism, deal inadequately with such men and
fail to discharge my debt of gratitude to them.
It is comparatively easy for professors, secre-
taries and even bishops to criticize the man in
a local situation from the perspective and the
safety (relative, of course,) which an irre-
sponsible itinerancy supplies.

No amount of pressure from an itinerant
“prophet” can change the fact that a minister is
bound to be a statesman as much as a prophet,
dealing with situations as well as principles. In
specific situations, actions must be judged not
only in terms of absolute standards but in con-
sideration of available resources in the lives of
those whom the minister leads.

It may be well for the statesman to know that
statesmanship easily degenerates into oppor-
tunism and that opportunism cannot be sharply
distinguished from dishonesty. But the prophet
ought to realize that his higher perspective and

x8

PREFACE AND APOLOGY

the uncompromising natmre of his judgments
always has a note of irresponsibility in it. Fran-
cis of Assisi may have been a better Christian
than Pope Innocent III. But it may be ques-
tioned whether his moral superiority over the
latter was as absolute as it seemed. Nor is there
any reason to believe that Abraham Lincoln,
the statesman and opportunist, was morally in-
ferior to WiUiam Lloyd Garrison, the prophet.
The moral achievement of statesmen must be
judged in terms which take account of the limi-
tations of human society which the statesman
must, and the prophet need not, consider.

Having both entered and left the parish min-
istry against my inclinations, I pay my tribute
to the calling, firm m the conviction that it offers
greater opportimities for both moral adventure
and social usefulness than any other calling if
it is entered with open eyes and a consciousness
of the hazards to virtue which lurk in it. I make
no apology for being critical of what I love. No
one wants a love which is based upon illusions,
and there is no reason why we should not love a
profession and yet be critical of it.

Reinhold Niebuhr

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK
OF A TAMED CYNIC

1915

There is something ludierous about a callow
young fool like myself standing up to preach a
sermon to these good folks. I talk wisely about
life and know little about life’s problems. I teU
them of the need of sacrifice, although most of
them could tell me sometlnng about what that
really means. I preached a sermon the other day
on "The Involuntary Cross,” using the text of
\Simon the Gyrene bearing the cross of Jesus. A
good woman, a little bolder than the rest, asked
me in going out whether I had borne many
crosses. I think I know a little more about that
than I would be willing to confess to her or to
the congregation, but her question was justified.

Many of the people insist that they can’t un-
derstand how a man so young as I could possibly
be a preacher. Since I am twenty-three their re-
action to my youth simply means that they find
something incompatible even between the ripe
. age of twenty-three and the kind of seasoned

20

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

wisdom which they expect from the pulpit. ^"Let
no one despise thy youth/' said Paul to Timo-
thy; but I doubt whether that advice stopped
any of the old saints from wagging their heads.
I found it hard the first few months to wear a
pulpit gown. Now I am getting accustomed to
it. At first I felt too much like a priest in it, and
I abhor priesthness. I have become reconciled to
it partly as a simple matter of habit, but I imag-
ine that I am also beginning to like the gown as
a kind of symbol of authority. It gives me the
feeling that I am speaking not altogether in my
own name and out of my own experience but by
the authority of the experience of many Chris-
tian centuries.

DiflBcult as the pulpit job is, it is easier than
the work in the organizations of the congrega-
tion. Where did anyone ever learn in a seminary
how to conduct or help with a Ladies Aid meet-
ing? I am glad that mother has come to live with
me and will take care of that part of the job.
It is easier to speak sagely from the pulpit than
to act wisely in the detailed tasks of the parish.
A young preacher would do well to be heard
more than he is seen.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

21

1915

I am glad there are only eighteen families in
this church. I have been visiting the members
for six weeks and haven’t seen all of them yet.
Usually I walk past a house two or three times
before I summon the courage to go in. I am
always very courteously received, so I don’t
know exactly why I should not be able to over-
come this curious timidity. I don’t know that
very much comes of my visits except that I
really get acquainted with the people.

Usually after I have made a call I find some
good excuse to quit for the afternoon. I used to
do that in the days gone by when I was a book
agent. But there was reason for it then. I needed
the afternoon to regain my self-respect. Now it
seems to be pure laziness and fear. The people
are a little discouraged. Some of them seem to
doubt whether the church will survive. But
there are a few who are the salt of the earth,
and if I make a go of this they will be more
responsible than they will ever know.

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

22

1915

Now that I have preached about a dozen ser-
mons I find I am repeating myself. A different
text simply means a different pretext for saying
the same thing over again. The few ideas that
I had worked into sermons at the seminary have
all been used, and now what? I suppose that as
the years go by life and experience will prompt
some new ideas and I will find some in the Bible
that I have missed so far. They say a young
preacher must catch his second wind before he
can really preach. I’d better catch it pretty soon
or the weekly sermon will become a terrible
chore.

You are supposed to stand before a congre-
gation, brimming over with a great message.
Here I am trying to find a new little message
each Sunday. If I really had great convictions
I suppose they would struggle for birth each
week. As the matter stands, I struggle to find
an idea worth presenting and I almost dread
the approach of a new sabhath. I don’t know
whether I can ever accustom myself to the task
of bringing light and inspiration in regular
weekly installments.

KJr JiX i.A.iViJCiJU i IN

How in the world can you reconcile the inevi-
tability of Sunday and its tasks with the moods
and caprices of the soul? The prophet speaks
only when he is inspired. The parish preacher
must speak whether he is inspired or not. I
wonder whether it is possible to live on a high
enough plane to do that without sinning against
the Holy Spirit.

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

24

1916

Visited old Mrs. G. today and gave her com-
munion. This was my first experience with com-
munion at the sick bed. I think there is a good
deal of superstition connected with the rite. It
isn’t very much different in some of its aspects
from the Catholic rite of extreme imction. Yet
I will not be too critical. If the rite suggests
and expresses the emotion of honest contrition
it is more than superstition. But that is the difiB-
culty of acting as priest. It is not in your power
to determine the use of a symbol. Whether it is
a blessing or a bit of superstition rests alto-
gether with the recipient.

I must admit that I am losing some of the
aversion to the sacraments cultivated in my
seminary days. There is something very beauti-
ful about parents bringing their child to the
altar with a prayer of thanksgiving and as an
act of dedication. The trouble is that the old
ritual in the book of forms does not express this
idea clearly. I have to put the whole meaning
of the sacrament as I see it into the prayer.
Perhaps I can use my own form later on, if I
get the confidence of the people.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

25

Incidentally Mrs. G. gave me a shock this
afternoon. After the service was completed she
fished around under her pillow and brought
forth a five dollar bill. That was to pay me for
my trouble. I never knew this fee business still
existed in such a form in Protestantism. I knew
they were stiU paying for baptism in some de-
nominations, ours included. But this is a new
one. The old lady was a httle hurt, I think, by
my refusal. I think she imagined that pity
prompted my diffidence. She insisted that she
was quite able to pay. Td better get started on
this whole fee question and make an announce-
ment that I won’t accept any fees for anything.
I think I’ll except weddings however. Every one
takes fees for them. It will just make a scene
when the groom or best man slyly crosses your
palm with a bill and you make a righteous re-
fusal. They never will understand. Marriage is
not a sacrament anyway. Then, too, it’s fun get-
ting a httle extra money once in a while. But
isn’t marriage a sacrament?

a6

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1916

Doesn’t this denominational business wear on
one’s nerves? If I were a doctor people would
consult me according to the skill I had and the
reputation I could acquire. But being a minister
I can appeal only to people who are labeled as
I am. Yesterday that professor I met asked me
what denomination I belonged to. Being told,
he promptly pigeonholed me into my proper
place and with a superior air assumed that my
mind was as definitely set by my denominational
background as is that of an African Hottentot
by his peculiar environment.

Perhaps if I belonged to a larger denomina-
tion this wouldn’t irk me so much. I sufiFer from
an inferiority complex because of the very
numerical weakness of my denomination. If I
belonged to a large one I might strut about and
claim its glory for myself. If I give myself to
rehgion as a profession I must find some interde-
nominational outlet for my activities. But what?
Secretaries and Y.M.C.A. workers are too in-
articulate. They deal too much with machinery
and too little with ideas. I don’t want to be a
chauffeur. Does that mean that I am a minister

merely because I am a fairly glib talker? Who
knows?

But let us not be too cynical and too mor-
bidly introspective. I may find something worth
saying in time and escape the fate of being a
mere talker. At any rate I swear that I will never
aspire to be a preacher of pretty sermons. I’ll
keep them rough just to escape the temptation
of degenerating into an elocutionist. Maybe I
had better stop quoting so much poetry. But
that is hardly the point. Plenty of sermons lack
both beauty and meaning.

z8

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOO]

1916

The young fellows I am trying to teach in Sun
day school don’t listen to me attentively. I don’
think I am getting very close to where they live
Or perhaps I just haven’t learned how to pu
my message across. I am constantly interruptec
in my talk by the necessity of calling someont
to order. It is a good thing that I have a clas;
like that. I’ll venture that my sermons aren’1
getting any nearer to the people, but the htth
group of adults I am speaking to in the morning
service are naturally more patient or at leasi
more polite than these honest youngsters, anc
so I have less chance to find out from them
how futile I am. But that doesn’t solve the prob-
lem of how to reach those fellows.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

29

1916

I had a letter from Professor L today sug-

gesting that I return to college and prepare my-
self for the teaching profession. A year ago I was
certain that I would do that. Now I am not
so sure. Nevertheless the academic life has its
allurements. It is really simpler than the min-
istry. As a teacher your only task is to discover
the truth. As a preacher you must conserve other
interests besides the truth. It is your business to
deal circumspectly with the whole religious in-
heritance lest the virtues which are involved in
the older traditions perish through your icono-
clasm. That is a formidable task and a harassing
one; for one can never be quite sure where
pedagogical caution ends and dishonesty begins.

What is particularly disquieting to a young
man in the ministry is the fact that some of his
fine old colleagues make such a virtue of their
ignorance. They are sure that there is no Second
Isaiah and have never heard that Deuteronomy
represents a later development in the law. I
can’t blame them for not having all the bright
new knowledge of a recent seminarian (not
quite as new as the seminarian imagines); but

30 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

the ministry is the only profession in which you
can make a virtue of ignorance. If you have
read nothing but commentaries for twenty years,
that is supposed to invest you with an aura of
sanctity and piety. Every profession has its tra-
ditions and its traditionalists. But the tradition-
alists in the pulpit are much more certain than
the others that the Lord is on their side.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

31

1917

Next week we are going to hold our first every
member canvass. They expect me to preach a
sermon which will prepare the good people to
give generously. I don’t mind that. Most people
give little enough for the church or for anything
else not connected with their own pleasures. But
I don’t see how you can preach a sermon ade-
quate to the needs of the moment without iden-
tifying the church with the kingdom of God too
unqualifiedly. And meanwhile you are drawing
your salary from the church and remembering
that if the canvass is a success there may be an
increase in salary next year. It isn’t easy to mix
the business of preaching with the business of
making a living and maintain your honesty and
self-respect.

Of course every laborer is worthy of his hire.
But you notice that Paul, who insisted on that
point, nevertheless prided himself on his inde-
pendence. He wanted “not yours but you.” But
let us not be too squeamish. There is old J.Q.
It would do his soul good iF he loosened up a
bit. One might say to him, “I want yours so that
I can get you.”

32

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1918

{After a trip through the war training camps. )

I hardly know how to bring order out of con-
fusion in my mind m regard to this war. I think
that if Wilson’s aims are realized the war will
serve a good purpose. When I talk to the boys
I make much of the Wilsonian program as
against the kind of diplomacy which brought
on the war. But it is easier to talk about the
aims of the war than to justify its methods.

Out at Funston I watched a bayonet practice.
It was enough to make me feel like a brazen
hypocrite for being in this thing, even in a rather
indirect way. Yet I cannot bring myself to asso-
ciate with the pacifists. Perhaps if I were not of
German blood I could. That may be cowardly,
but I do think that a new nation has a right tc
be pretty sensitive about its unity.

Some of the good old Germans have a hard
time hiding a sentiment which borders verj;
closely on hatred for this nation. Anyone whc
dissociates himself from the cause of his nation
in such a time as this ought to do it only on the
basis of an unmistakably higher loyalty. If 1

OF A TAMED CYNIC

33

dissociated myself only slightly I would inevi-
tably be forced into the camp of those who
romanticize about the Kaiser. And the Kaiser
is certainly nothing to me. If we must have war
I’ll certainly feel better on the side of Wilson
than on the side of the Kaiser.

What makes me angry is the way I kowtow
to the chaplains as I visit the various camps.
Here are ministers of the gospel just as I am.
Just as I they are also, for the moment, priests
of the great god Mars. As ministers of the Chris-
tian religion I have no particular respect for
them. Yet I am overcome by a terrible inferiority
complex when I deal with them. Such is the
power of a uniform. Like myself, they have
mixed the worship of the God of love and the
God of battles. But unlike myself, they have
adequate symbols of this double devotion. The
little cross on the shoulder is the symbol of their
Christian faith. The uniform itself is the symbol
of their devotion to the God of battles. It is the
uniform and not the cross which impresses me
and others. I am impressed even when I know
that I ought not be.

What I dislike about most of the chaplains
is that they assume a very oflBcious and also a
very masculine attitude. Ministers are not used
to authority and revel in it when acquired. The
rather too obvious masculinity which they try

34 LEAVES FROM THE NOT] 30OK

to suggest by word and action is meant o re-
move any possible taint which their Ch stian
faith might be suspected to have left upoi them

in the minds of the he-men in the army. ’

is right. He tells me that he wants to g into
the army as a private and not as a chapla i. He
beheves that the war is inevitable but he s not
inclined to reconcile its necessities wil i the
Christian ethic. He will merely forget abo t this
difficulty during the war. That is much more
honest than what I am doing.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

35

1918

I can see one element in this strange fascination
of war which men have not adequately noted.
It reduces life to simple terms. The modern man
lives in such a complex world that one wonders
how his sanity is maintained as well as it is.
Every moral venture, every social situation and
every practical problem involves a whole series
of conflicting loyalties, and a man may never be
quite sure that he is right in giving himself to
the one as against the other. Shall he be just
and sacrifice love? Shall he strive for beauty
and do it by gaining the social privileges which
destroy his sense of fellowship with the under-
privileged? Shall he serve his family and neglect
the state? Or be patriotic to the detriment of
the great family of mankind? Shall he be dih-
gent at the expense of his health? Or keep
healthy at the expense of the great cause in
which he is interested? Shall he be truthful and
therefore cruel? Or shall he be kind and there-
fore a little soft? Shall he strive for the ameni-
ties of life and make life less robust in the
process? Or shall he make courage the ultimate
virtue and brush aside the virtues which a sta-

36 LEAVES FROM THE NOTET )OK

ble and therefore soft society has cultivj ed?

Out of this mesh of conflicting claims, i ter-
ests, loyalties, ideals, values and community ; he
is rescued by the psychology of war which ; ves
the state at least a momentary priority ov( all
other communities and which makes coi age
the supreme virtue. I talked to a young :ap-
tain at camp last week who told me how h Dpy
he was in the army because he had '‘found im-
self^ in military service. Our further conv rsa-
tion led me to suspect that it was this simpl ica-
tion of life which had really brought him h; 3pi-
ness; that and his love of authority.

Unfortunately, all these momentary sim lifi-
cations of the complexities of life cannc be
finally satisfying, because they do violenc i to
life. The imperiled community may for a no-
ment claim a kind of unqualified loyalty v lich
no community or cause has the right or abih y to
secure in normal times. But judgment retur s to
sobriety as events become less disjointed and
the world is once more revealed in all its on-
fusion of good in evil and evil in good. Th< im-
periled community was threatened becau; ) of
its vice as much as because of its virtue, an< the
diabolical foe reassumes the lineaments oi our
common humanity. Physical courage is pr ved
unequal to the task of ennobling man wil out
the aid of other virtues, and the same men vho

OF A TAMED CYNIC

37

have been raised to great heights by the self-
forgetfulness of war have been sunk into new
depths of hatred. There is only momentary
peace in an all-consuming passion, except it be
a passion for what is indubitably the best. And
what is the best?

38

LEAVES FROM THE NOTE: OOK

1919

We had a great Easter service today. M ther
made the httle chapel look very pretty, wo king
with a committee of yoimg women. It take real
work to decorate such a httle place, and m ke it
really inviting. We received oru: largest cL !s of
new members into the church thus far, tw nty-
one in all. Most of them had no letters fom
other churches and yet had been reared in ome
church. We received them on reaffirmati n of
faith.

This matter of recruiting a membershi 1 for
the church is a real problem. Even the chr ches
which once beheved a very definite convi sion
to be the sine qua non of entrance int the
fellowship of the church are going in foj “de-
cision days” as they lose confidence in th tra-
ditional assumption that one can beco le a
Christian only through a crisis experience But
if one does not insist on that kind of an e peri-
ence it is not so easy to set up tests of me iber-
ship. Most of these “personal evangelism” cam-
paigns mean httle more than an ordina '' re-
cruiting effort with church membership : ither
than the Christian life as the real objf tive.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

39

They do not diflFer greatly from efforts of various
clubs as they seek to expand their membership.

Of course we make “acceptance of Jesus as
your savior” the real door into the fellowship of
the church. But the trouble is that this may
mean everything or nothing. I see no way of
making the Christian fellowship unique by any
series of tests which precede admission. The only
possibihty lies in a winnowing process through
the instrumentality of the preaching and teach-
ing function of the church. Let them come in
without great difficulty, but make it difficult for
them to stay in. The trouble with this plan is
that it is always easy to load up yoinr member-
ship with very immature Christian" who will
finally set the standard and make it impossible
to preach and to teach the gospel in its full
implications.

40

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBC (K

1919

What a picture that is of Wilson, Lloyd Geo ye
and Clemenceau settling the fate of the wc Id
in Paris! Wilson is evidently losing his bai le.
He would have done better to stay at home ; id
throw bolts from Olympus. If you have hoi !St
and important differences of opinion with oth rs,
it is better to write letters than to put your i et
under the same table with them. Comprom es
are always more inevitable in personal con ct
than in long distance negotiation.

What seems to be happening at Paris is 1 lat
they wiU let Wilson label the transaction if he
others can determine its true import. Thus rc li-
ties are exchanged for words. There will be no
indemnities” but of course there will be rep ra-
tions; and, since the damage was great, he
reparations may be made larger than any > 0 -
called indemnity of the past. There will be no
aimexations” but there will be mandates.

Wilson is a typical son of the manse. He le-
lieves too much in words. The sly Clemenc au
sneaks new meanings into these nice word; in
which task he is probably ably helped by fr.
Lloyd George, who is an admirable go-betw m.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

41

being as worldly wise as M. Clemenceau and as
evangelical as Mr. Wilson. Yet who knows? Time
may yet give Mr. Wilson the victory. Words
have certain meanings of which it is hard to
rob them, and ideas may create reahty in time.
The league of nations may be, for the time be-
ing, merely a league of victors but it will be
difficult to destroy the redemptive idea at the
heart of it completely. Realities are always de-
feating ideals, but ideals have a way of taking
vengeance upon the facts which momentarily
imprison them.

On the other hand, it is always possible that
diabolical facts will so discredit the idea which
they ostensibly incarnate that they will necessi-
tate the projection of a new idea before progress
can be made.

42

LEAVES FROM THE NOT] BOOK

1919

Visited Miss Z. at the hospital. I like to g now
since she told me that it helps her to ha e me
pray with her. I asked the doctor about h r and
he says her case is hopeless. Here faith eem.s
really to be functioning in lifting the soul .hove
physical circumstance. I have been so afi id of
quackery that I have leaned over bad rards
trying to avoid the encouragement oi false
hopes. Sometimes when I compare mysel with
these efficient doctors and muses hustling ibout
I feel hke an ancient medicine man di nped
into the twentieth century. I think the) have
about the same feehng toward me that ! have
about myself.

It must be very satisfying to deal as ar exact
scientist with known data upon which t base
your conclusions. I have to work in the tA ihght
zone where superstition is inextricably non d up
with something that is — ^weU, not supersti on. I
do beheve that Jesus healed people. I can help
but note, however, that a large proportion )f his
cures were among the demented. If peoj 3 ask
me, I tell them that rehgion has more hera-
peutic value in functional than in organ ; dis-

OF A TAMED CYNIC

43

eases. But I don’t know whether I am altogether
honest about this at the bedside. I am still pray-
ing for health with Miss Z. But of course I don’t
leave it at that. I am trying to prepare her for
the inevitable and I think I have helped her a
little in that respect.

44

LEAVES FROM THE NOTE] )OK

1919

This sickness of Miss Z.’s is getting on my ne /es.
I can’t think of anything for the rest of the day
after coming from that bed of pain. If I lad
more patients I suppose I would get a little ] ore
hardened. Talk about professionahsm! I sup ose
men get professional to save their emotions re-
sources. Here I make one visit in an after: Don
and get all done up. Meanwhile the doct r is
making a dozen. He is less sentimental, but
probably does more good.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

45

1920

I am really beginning to like the ministry. I
think since I have stopped worrying so much
about the intellectual problems of rehgion and
have begun to explore some of its ethical prob-
lems there is more of a thrill in preaching. The
real meaning of the gospel is in conflict with
most of the customs and attitudes of our day at
so many places that there is adventure in the
Christian message, even if you only play around
with its ideas in a conventional world. I can’t
say that I have done anything in my life to
dramatize the conflict between the gospel and
the world. But I find it increasingly interesting
to set the two in juxtaposition at least in my
mind and in the minds of others. And of course
ideas may finally lead to action.

A young woman came to me the other day in

and told me that my talk on forgiveness in

the C Church of that town several months

ago has brought about a reconciliation between
her mother and sister after the two had been in
a feud for five years. I accepted the news with
more outward than inward composure. There is
redemptive power in the message! I could go on

46 LEAVES FROM THE NOTES OK

the new courage that came out of that little dc-
tory for many a month.

I think I am beginning to like the ministry Iso
because it gives you a splendid opportunit to
have all kinds of contacts with people in : da-
tionships in which they are at their best. Yo do
get tired of human pettiness at times. But t sre
is nevertheless something quite glorious al )ut
folks. That is particularly true when you nd
them bearing sorrow with real patience. T hk

of Mrs. putting up with that drunkan of

a husband for the sake of her children— nd
having such nice children. One can learn n )re
from her quiet courage than from many a b jk.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

47

1920

Good old Gordon came to me today to advise
me that so-and-so might join the church but
that he had been told that I talked considerably
on poHtical issues and he did not like politics in
church. I told my friend that I did not like po-
htical lectures in a worship service myself, but
that every rehgious problem had ethical impli-
cations and every ethical problem had some
political and economic aspect. We had quite a
nice chat about it, though my explanation did
not seem altogether satisfactory. Gordon sug-
gested that I seemed unable to get as many
“prominent” people into the church as I ought.
I told him that we had some very nice people
in our church, but that I had no particular de-
sire or ability to cater to “prominent” people,
especially since there are plenty of churches
who seem to serve this class quite well.

This is as close as I have come to having the
freedom of the pulpit challenged, except of
course by the tacit challenge of an occasional
defection from the ranks. The problem of the
freedom of the pulpit is a real one. But I am
convinced that the simplest way to get hberty is

48 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEI )OK

to take it. The liberty to speak on all vital c les-
tions of the day "without qualifying the mes age
in a half dozen ways adds sufiBcient intere ; to
the otherwise stodgy sermon to attract :wo
hsteners for every one who is lost by ha ing
some pet prejudice disarranged. But that en-
eralization is hardly justified by my meagei ex-
perience.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

49

1920

I had a great discussion in my young men’s
class this morning. Gradually I am beginning to
discover that my failure with the class was due
to my talking too much. Now I let them talk and
the thing is becoming interesting. Of course it
isn’t so easy to keep the discussion steered on any
track. Sometimes we talk in circles. But the fel-
lows are at least getting at some of the vital
problems of life and I am learning something
from them. Disciplinary problems have disap-
peared. The only one left is the fellow who is
always trying to say something foohsh or smart
m the discussion.

50

LEAVES FROM THE NOTl 500K

1920

I went to the funeral of Mrs. T. at St. Cf ilia’s
church. It must be a grateful task to des as a
priest with the definite symbols which the Cath-
olic church uses and to dispense the ab jlute
certainties with which she assures the fa hful.
Of course the requiem mass contains n( hing
that would be of obvious comfort to the sc row-
ing heart. But the imphcation of the hole
transaction is that the soul is now taken p in
another world in which the heartaches c this
life are overcome.

I don’t think the mass is so satisfying as a
well conducted Protestant funeral servi 3 in
which some cognizance is taken of the pe iliar
circumstances of a great sorrow and 0 the
unique characteristics of the deceased. I it it
is certainly immeasurably superior to the ver-
age Protestant service with its banalitie; and
sentimentalities. Religion is poetry. The rath
in the poetry is vivified by adequate | letic
symbols and is therefore more convincing han
the poor prose with which the average pre :her
must attempt to grasp the ineffable.

Yet one must not forget that the truth i not

OF A TAMED CYNIC 5I

only vivified but also corrupted by the poetic
symbol, for it is only one step from a vivid 5300-
bol to the touch of magic. The priest does, after
all, deal with magic. When religion renounces
magic it finds itself in the poor workaday world
trying to discover the glimpses of the eternal in
the common scene. That is not an easy task,
but it is not an impossible one. Wherefore let
us envy the priest, but pity him too, mean-
while. He has been betrayed by his magic. He
has gained too easy a victory over life’s dif-
ficulties and he helps his people to find a pre-
mature peace. The rivers of life in Protestant
religion are easily lost in the sand, but if they
really run they carry more life than holy water.

52

LEAVES FROM THE NOTE] 30K

1921

I spoke to the club today and was i: tro-

duced by the chairman as a pastor who hat re-
cently built a new church at “the impre: ive
cost of $170,000.” While the figure was not c lite
correct it gave me somewhat of a start to ind
how much emphasis was placed upon what vas
regarded as a great business achievement. I ere
was a group of business men, and the cl lir-
man knew of no way to recommend me to t em
but by suggesting that I was myself a busi ess
man of no mean ability. That would have g: en
the good men of my church council a lai ^h.
Knowing how little I had to do with the rai ng
of the money for the new church and how 1 1 ve
always failed to put on the kind of “pressi :e”
they desired when we were raising money, t ey
would certainly have smiled wryly at this !U-
logy.

But it is all natural enough. America worsl ps
success and so does the world in general, i ad
the only kind of success the average man an
understand is obvious success. There must be

“Things done that took the eye, that had he
price;

o’er which from level stand.

The low world laid its hand.

Found straightway to its mind, could value in
a trice.”

After all the real work of a minister is not
easily gauged and the world may not be entirely
wrong in using external progress as an outward
sign of an inward grace. Even those who value
the real work of the ministry sometimes express
their appreciation in rather superficial phrases.

I remember when dear old celebrated his

twenty-fifth anniversary the good toastmaster
pathetically described his pastor’s successful
ministry by explaining that under his leadership
the congregation had “doubled its membership,
installed a new organ, built a parsonage, dec-
orated the church and wiped out its debt.” Not
a word about the words of comfort the good
pastor had spoken or the inspiration he had
given to thirsting souls.

Perhaps it is foolish to be too sensitive about
these inevitable secularizations of religious val-
ues. Let us be thankful that there is no quarterly
meeting in our denomination and no need of
giving a district superintendent a bunch of
statistics to prove that our ministry is success-
ful.

54

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEl )OK

1921

I visited Mrs. S. today. She is suffering rom
cancer and will not live long. Her young g nd-
son E. came home from high school just as ! was
leaving. He had a question for me. The J( vish
boys at school told him Jesus was a bastar( and
Joseph was not his father. He also reportec that
they accused him of having two Gods inste d of
one. That dissolution of the Trinity into a ual-
ism by high school boys interested me. iven
boys seem to sense that if orthodox trinitarij lism
makes for polytheism it really suggests two Jods
rather than three. I chided E. for rememt ring
so poorly what he had learned in the prepai tory
class and for being so irregular in church s hool
where these problems are discussed. I wen over
some of the ideas on the humanity am the
uniqueness of Jesus which we had discuss d in
the class.

Meanwhile I wished that I could talk t him
alone without interference from grandma who
naively added her own theological musts d to
the dish. It is no easy task to build up the Faith
of one generation and not destroy the su] oorts
of the rehgion of the other. But fortunate the

OF A TAMED CYNIC

55

old lady didn’t get what I was driving at and
so didn’t interfere very seriously. She was thank-
ful to me for straightening the young man out
on his theology and seemed to think that I had
settled all his difficulties by my few words. “Ich
habe ihm gesagt, wart his der Pastor kommt.
Der wird dir aUes erldaeren.” It isn’t a bad
idea to find someone who has such confidence
in you.

56

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEl )OK

1922

When I sit in my study and meditate upon nen
and events I am critical and circumspect, /hy
is it that when I arise in the pulpit I try 1 be
imaginative and am sometimes possessed y a
kind of madness which makes my utterj ices
extravagant and dogmatic? Perhaps this ch nge
of technique is due to my desire to move the
audience. Audiences are not easily moved :om
their lethargy by cool and critical analyse; An
appeal to the emotions is necessary and mo-
tions axe not aroused by a careful analys : of
facts but by a presentation of ideal values. ^ do
not mean that I disavow the critical metho' en-
tirely in the pulpit. Indeed many of my frit idly
critics think I am too critical to be a ood
preacher. Nor am I ever very emotional. N ii'er-
theless there is a distinct difference betwee my
temper in the study and my spirit in the p [pit.

Perhaps this is as it should be. Let the ; udy
serve to reveal the relativity of all things sc :hat
pulpit utterances do not become too ext iva-
gant, and let the pulpit save the student rom
sinking in the sea of relativities. However ( lah-

OF A TAMED CYNIC

57

Bed every truth may be there is nevertheless a
portion in every truth and value which is essen-
tially absolute and which is therefore worth
proclaiming. “All oratory,” declares a Greek
scholar, “is based on half truths.” That is why
one ought naturally to distrust and to discount
the orator. On the other hand, oratory may be
the result of the kind of poetic gift which sees
a truth dissociated, for a moment at least, from
all relativities of time and circumstance and
lifted into the hght of the absolute.

I notice that the tendency of extravagance in
the pulpit and on the platform increases with
the size of the crowd. As my congregation in-
creases m size I become more unguarded iu my
statements. Wherefore may the good Lord de-
liver me from ever being a popular preacher.
“Why is it,” asked one of my elders the other
day, “that your Sunday evening sermons are
more pessimistic than your morning sermons?”
I think what he really meant is that they were
more critical in analyzing life’s problems. I told
him that I tried to give inspiration in the morn-
ing and education in the evening.

But the fact is that circumstance probably
affects the quality of the message as much as
purpose. A full church gives me the sense of
fighting with a victorious host in the battles of

58 LEAVES FROM THE NOTE] DOK

the Lord. A half empty church immedi tely
symbolizes the fact that Christianity is 'ery
much of a minority movement in a pagan \ wld
and that it can be victorious only by snatc ing
victory out of defeat.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

59

1922

Just received a pitiful letter from a young pastor
■who is losing his church because he has been
“too liberal.” I suppose there are churches which
will crucify a leader who tries to lead them into
the modern world of thought and life. Yet here
I have been all these years in a conservative
communion and have never had a squabble
about theology. I suppose that is partly due to
the fact that there were so few people here
when I came that no one had to listen to me if
he didn’t like my approach. Those who have
come have associated themselves with us be-
cause they were in general agreement with “our
gospel.” They have come, however, from con-
servative communions and churches. But of
course they have been mostly young people.

If preachers get into trouble in pursuance of
their task of reinterpreting religious aflBrmations
in the hght of modern knowledge I think it must
be partly because they beat their drums too
loudly when they make their retreats from im-
tenable positions of ancient orthodoxy. The cor-
rect strategy is to advance at the center with
beating drums and let your retreats at the wings

6o LEAVES FROM THE NOTEI )OK

follow as a matter of course and in the int rest
of the central strategy. You must be hones of
course, hut you might just as well straighten ind
shorten your lines without mock heroics a: i a
fanfare of trumpets.

The beauty of this strategy is that the: is
enough power at the center for a real advi ice
and enough opposition for a real conflict. If ou
set the message of a gospel of love again . a
society enmeshed in hatreds and bigotries nd
engulfed in greed, you have a real but not ; ic-
essarily a futile conflict on your hands. Thei is
enough natural grace in the human heart tc re-
spond to the challenge of the real message in
the gospel — and enough original sin in hui an
nature to create opposition to it. The sorr sst
preachers are those who preach a conventic al
morality while they try to be intellectually i id
theologically radical.

Men will not make great intellectual readji ;t-
ments for a gospel which does not greatly n t-
ter. If there is real adventure at the center af
the line the reserves are drawn from the wi: ^s
almost unconsciously.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

6l

1923

Gradually the whole horrible truth about the
war is being revealed. Every new book destroys
some further illusion. How can we ever again
believe anything when we compare the solemn
pretensions of statesmen with the cynically con-
ceived secret treaties? Here was simply a tre-
mendous contest for power between two great
alliances of states in which the caprice of states-
men combined with basic economic conflicts to
dictate the peculiar form of the alliances. Next
time the cards will be shuffled in a different way
and the “fellowship in arms” will consist of dif-
ferent fellows.

As the truth becomes known there are how-
ever some compensations for the disillusion-
ment. If the moral pretensions of the heroes
were bogus, the iniquity of the villains was not
as malicious as it once appeared. The Kaiser was
evidently a boob who was puerile enough to
permit the German navahsts to force him into
policies which he did not understand. Von Tir-
pitz and his crowd may have been the real vil-
lains but they probably did not want the war
so much as they wanted to glorify the navy and

62 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBC )K

themselves through it. If Poincare was the il-
lain, it was the limitations of a narrow and 1 g-
oted nationalism rather than the malice of in
evil heart which prompted his policies. The j or
little Czar was the victim of a neurotic v Fe,
and she in turn the tool of rehgious fanatics id
fear-tormented bureaucrats.

There doesn’t seem to be very much ma ce
in the world. There is simply not enough ir 3I-
ligence to conduct the intricate afiEairs of a c n-
plex civilization. All the chief actors in the ar
appear now in the light of children who pla ed
with dangerous toys. If they were crimins it
was in the sense that the weal of millions as
involved in their dangerous games and t ey
didn’t let that fact dissuade them from t sir
play. All human sin seems so much worse ii its
consequences than in its intentions.

But that is not a fact which justifies m ral
nihilism. The consequences are obvious and in-
evitable enough to deter a sensitive soul f )m
the course which leads to destruction, iot
merely ignorance but callousness to human ’ el-
fare is an ingredient in the compound of sc ial
and personal evil.

In one sense modern civilization substit :es
unconscious sins of more destructive co se-
quences for conscious sins of less destruc ve
consequences. Men try consciously to elimii ite

OF A TAMED CYNIC 63

the atrocities of society, but meanwhile they
unheedingly build a civilization which is more
destructive of moral and personal values than
anything intended in a more primitive society.

64

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEB OK

1923

I met a wonderful parson in the little villag of

. I went there to speak at a high sc doI

commencement. His church seemed to be an
ordinary village church, but he was undenii )]y
the real leader of the commimity. Broad syn )a-
thies had made it possible for him to transc nd
the usual denominational divisions which re-
duce most ministers to impotence in small c n-
munities, at least as far as wider commu ty
leadership is concerned. There were a ;w
other churches in town, but he had develo 3d
so many types of cooperation between tl m
that they were almost a unit in their enterpi le.

He had built a small church house which ■ as
a hive of activity throughout the week. He c n-
ducted his own weekday school of relig; n,
spending three afternoons at the job. His in u-
ence upon the young people was evident! a
fruit of this close contact with them. He was so
happy in his work that he did not look u] tn
big city churches as the natural goal of his £ 1 -
bition. His wife and he and two little kidc 3s
live very modestly in a little parsonage, and le
mistress of the manse seems to find time :o

mother the neighborhood as well as her chil-
dren.

Perhaps I am inclined to romanticize about
village life. Sometimes it is very petty and mean,
I know. But the absence of great class distinc-
tions makes for a higher type of fellowship in
church and community than is achieved in the
metropolis, and the preacher is not tempted to
placate the powerful. The modest stipend which
the small church can afford makes for simple
living and the absence of social pride. If more
young fellows would be willing to go into
churches like that and not suffer from inferiority
complexes because they had not landed one of
the ‘T5ig pulpits,” we might put new power into
the church.

Fortunately, this young fellow has an astute
intelligence without being an orator. If he were
a more gifted speaker he would probably have
been “promoted” — and spoiled — ^long ago. I
have often observed that privilege and power
tend to corrupt the simple Christian heart. I
^ now convinced that to these two must be
added the kind of obvious success which the
world knows how to measure. The simplicity
which is preserved because it does not meet the
temptation of success is innocence rather than
virtue; but if we can’t have virtue, innocence
is preferable to moral failmre.

66

LEAVES FROM THE N )TE

There are successful men who h; rt
tained a Aurtuous humility and sincei ;y i
day of success, but the achievement is erj
cult.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

67

^92^3

In Europe

I have been spending a few days with S

and P in the Ruhr district. Flew back to

London from Cologne by aeroplane. The Ruhr
cities are the closest thing to hell I have ever
seen. I never knew that you could see hatred
with the naked eye, but in the Ruhr one is
under the illusion that this is possible. The
atmosphere is charged with it. The streets are
filled with French soldiers in their grey-blue
uniforms. Schools have been turned into bar-
racks. Germans turn anxious and furtive glances
upon every stranger. French officers race their
automobiles wildly through the streets with
sirens blowing shrilly. If you can gain the con-
fidence of Germans so that they will talk they
will tell you horrible tales of atrocities, deporta-
tions, sex crimes, etc. Imagination fired by fear
and hatred undoubtedly tends to elaborate
upon the sober facts. But the facts are bad
enough.

When we arrived at Cologne after spending
days in the French zone of occupation we felt as
if we had come into a different world. The obvi-

68

LEAVES FROM THE N< lEBO

ous reluctance of the British to mi :e co
mon cause with the French in the Rul ’ adv(
ture has accentuated the good will bet ^een t
British troops and the native popula on. E
a day in Cologne cannot erase the mi nory
Essen and Duesseldorf. It rests upon i le mi
like a horrible nightmare. One wouh like
send every sentimental spellbinder of ^ ar di
into the Ruhr. This, then, is the gloric is iss
for which the war was fought! I didi t km
Europe in 1914, but I can’t imagine lat 1
hatred between peoples could have bee i wo
than it is now.

This is as good a time as any to mak up i
mind that I am done with the war busi ess.
course, I wasn’t really in the last war. Woi
that I had been! Every soldier, fighting for
country in simphcity of heart withoul ask
many questions, was superior to those ol is v
served no better purpose than to increase or p
petuate the moral obfuscation of nati qs.
course, we really couldn’t know everytl ng
know now. But now we know. The t aes
man’s ignorance God may wink at, but ow
calls us all to repent. I am done with th j bi
ness. I hope I can make that resolution si ck.

Talking about the possibility of the hu;
renouncing war, as we came over on th be
one of the cynics suggested that the res

OF A TAMED CYNIC

69

temper of the church against war was prompted
by nausea rather than idealism. He insisted that
the church would not be able to prove for some
time that it is really sincere in this matter. I sup-
pose he is right; though I do not know that one
ought to be contemptuous of any experience
which leads to the truth. A pain in the stomach
may sometimes serve an ultimate purpose quite
as well as an idea in the head. Yet it is probably
true that nausea finally wears off and the ques-
tion will then be whether there is a more funda-
mental force which will maintain a conviction
in defiance of popular hysteria.

For my own part I am not going to let my
decision in regard to war stand alone. I am
going to try to be a disciple of Christ, rather
than a mere Christian, in all human relations
and experiment with the potency of trust and
love much more than I have in the past.

70

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEB( 3K

1923

This has been a wonderful Christmas sea; n.
The people have been splendid. It is fun to 50
into the homes and see the laughter and )y
of the children. It is rewarding to see how le
people respond to onr call for Christmas giv ig
among the poor. The church was piled h ;h
yesterday with groceries and toys of every e-
scription. There is so much that is good in ] >
man nature.

Of course the cynics will say that it is eas ?r
to be charitable than to be just, and the asti :e
social observers will note that what we give : »r
the needy is but a small fraction of what e
spend on ourselves. After aU, the spirit of Ic e
is still pretty well isolated in the family life, f
I had a family maybe that thought would ne\ r
occur to me. The old Methodist preacher w 0
told me some time ago that I was so cantanb -
ous in my spirit of criticism about modem i -
ciety because I am not married may be rig] :.
If I had about four children to love I might n t
care so much about insisting that the spirit f
love shall dominate all human aflEairs. And the }
might be more value in loving the four ch -
dren than in paying lip service to the spirit E
love as I do.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

71

1924

A revival meeting seems never to get under my
skin. Perhaps I am too fish-blooded to enjoy
them. But I object not so much to the emo-
tionalism as to the lack of intellectual honesty
of the average revival preacher. I do not mean
to imply that the evangelists are necessarily
consciously dishonest. They just dont know
enough about life and history to present the
problem of the Christian life in its full mean-
ing. They are always assuming that nothing but
an emotional commitment to Christ is needed
to save the soul from its sin and chaos. They
seem never to realize how many of the miseries
of mankind are due not to malice but to misdi-
rected zeal and unbalanced virtue. They never
help the people who corrupt family love by
making the family a selfish unit in society or
those who brutalize industry by excessive devo-
tion to the prudential virtues.

Of course that is all inevitable enough. If you
dont simplify issues you can t arouse emotional
crises. IPs the melodrama that captivates the
crowd. Sober history is seldom melodramatic.
God and the devil may be in conflict on the
scene of life and history, but a victory follows

72 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

every defeat and some kind of defeat every
victory. The representatives of God are seldom
divine and the minions of Satan are never quite
diabolical.

I wonder whether there is any way of be-
ing potent oratorically without over-simplifying
truth. Or must power always be bought at the
expense of truth? Perhaps some simplification of
life is justified. Every artist does, after all, ob-
scure some details in order to present others hi
bolder relief. The religious rhetorician has a
right to count himself among, and take his
standards from, the artists rather than the sci-
entists. The trouble is that he is usually no bet-
ter than a cartoonist.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

73

1924

After preaching tonight at a imion service in

the pastor loci took me about to show me

his “plant” (industriahsm has invaded even
ecclesiastical terminology) and with obvious
pride told me of all the progress that the church
had made since his advent. One of the most dis-
illusioning experiences which I have had with
ministers is their invariable tendency to behttle
or to be unappreciative of the work of their
predecessors. If one were to take the implications
of their remarks about their churches without a
grain of salt one would imagine that every
church was in an obvious state of spiritual and
organic decay before the present generation of
prophets took hold of the desperate situation.
There are, of course, marked exceptions to this
rule. But there is too much of this petty jealousy
of former laborers in the vineyard of the Lord.
Some of the men are probably victims of fawn-
ing parishioners and others are just naturally
petty.

74

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1924

I am not surprised that most prophets are itin-
erants. Critics of the church think we preachers
are afraid to tell the truth because we are eco-
nomically dependent upon the people of our
church. There is something in that, but it does
not quite get to the root of the matter. I cer-
tainly could easily enough get more money
than I am securing now, and yet I catch myself
weighing my words and gauging their possible
effect upon this and that person. I think the real
clue to the tameness of a preacher is the di£B-
culty one finds in telling unpleasant truths to
people whom one has learned to love.

To speak the truth in love is a diflBcrdt, and
sometimes an almost impossible, achievement.
If you speak the truth unqualifiedly, that is usu-
ally because your ire has been aroused or be-
cause you have no personal attachment to the
object of your strictures. Once personal contact
is established you are very prone to temper your
wind to the shorn sheep. It is certainly difficult
to be human and honest at the same time. I’m
not smprised that most budding prophets are
tamed in time to become harmless parish priests.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

75

At that, I do not know what business I have
carping at the good people who are doing the
world’s work and who are inevitably enmeshed
to a greater or less degree in the iniquities of
society. Conscience, Goethe has observed, be-
longs to the observer rather than the doer, and
it would be well for every preacher to realize
that he is morally sensitive partly because he is
observing and not acting. What is satisfying
about the ministry is to note how far you can
go in unfolding the full meaning of the Chris-
tian gospel provided you don’t present it with
the implication that you have attained and are
now la3dng it as an obligation upon others.

If the Christian adventure is made a mutual
search for truth in which the preacher is merely
a leader among many searchers and is conscious
of the same difficulties in his own experience
which he notes in others, I do not see why he
cannot be a prophet without being forced into
itinerancy.

76

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1924

In Europe

We began the day with a visit to the York min-
ster and ended it with a dinner at the Rountree
cocoa works. Some of the men thought there
was more spirituality in the discussion of the
ethical problems of modem industry in which
we engaged at Rountree’s than in the com-
munion service we heard so atrociously read in
the minster. Of course the dinner discussion was
richer in ethical content, but there are neverthe-
less religious values in the cathedral which one
cannot find in a discussion of ethical problems
however vital.

Religion is a reaction to life’s mysteries and
a reverence before the infinitudes of the uni-
verse. Without ethical experience the infinite
is never defined in ethical terms, but the soul
which is reverent and morally vital at the same
time learns how to apprehend the infinite in
terms of hohness and worships a God who tran-
scends both our knowledge and our conscience.
The cathedral with its dim religious light, its
vaulted ceiling, its altar screen, and its hushed

OF A TAMED CYNIC

77

whispers is symbolic of the element of mystery
in rehgion.

Without an adequate sermon no clue is given
to the moral purpose at the heart of the mystery,
and reverence remains without ethical content.
But a religion which never goes beyond a sense
of awe is no more complete (though perhaps
less serviceable) than one which has reduced
life’s ultimate and ineffable truth to a pat little
formula which a proud httle man expounds be-
fore a comfortable and complacent congrega-
tion. I am sorry that there is no more ethically
vital preaching in the cathedral, though that
wretched communion service this morning,
which could help no one if he did not believe
in magic, is hardly typical of everything which
happens in a cathedral. But I am equally sorry
that the sense of awe and reverence has de-
parted from so many of omr churches.

The very appearance of many of our churches
betrays the loss of one necessary element in reli-
gion. Everything suggests the secular rather
than the religious, from the red hat of the rather
too sensuously pretty soprano soloist and the
frock coat of the rather too self-conscious par-
son to the comfortable pew cushions and the
splendiferous pew holders. The morning sun
shines brightly into the “auditorium” and the

78 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

sun of worldly wisdom illumines the discourse
of the preacher.

Of course I know that the devotional attitude
frequently destroys clear thinking, and we need
clear thinking for ethical hving in a complex
civihzation. But it ought not be impossible to
preserve the poetic with the scientific attitude,
the mystical with the analytical, to have both
worship and instruction. I think that is what
Heywood Broun was driving at some time ago
when he expressed a preference for an “Epis-
copal church with an heretical sermon.” Unfor-
tunately the heretical, i.e., the morally vital and
contemporaneous religious instruction, does not
seem to flourish in the liturgical church.

But there are men here in England who
preach prophetic sermons in cathedrals. There
might be more. In America they are certainly
not nmnerous. But that is no reason why we
should dismiss religious awe and reverence as
morally dangerous. After aU, the prophetic
preaching which we hear in omr “church audi-
toriums” is not so vigorous as to give us any
certainty that a secularized church is superior
in its moral potency.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

79

1924

While visiting at the home of Mr. and Mrs.

today little Ralph felt it incumbent upon

himself to entertain me by putting the family
dog through his tricks. I have aheady forgotten
the breed of the dog, but his shaggy locks cov-
ered his eyes so completely that he seemed to
be without eyesight. Ralph told me with great
eagerness that the dog would go blind if his
locks were cut to improve his eyesight. Thus
nature adjusts herself to her own inadequacies,
and women of the future may run the peril of
deafness if they uncover their ears.

Ralph’s dog gave me the clue to much of our
irreligion. The eyes of so many people have
been covered by superstitions and illusions that
they are not strong enough to preserve their
sight in the dayhght of knowledge. Freed from
their superstitions, they are bhnded in the very
moment that they are given an imhindered
view. They could see beauty while they lived
in twilight, but a brilliant light obscures life’s
beauty and meaning.

Of course the eye may ultimately adjust itself
to the brilliance of the light, and as men grow

8o

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

accustomed to the concrete and specific objects
which distract them on first sight, they will
learn again to view the whole scene and to re-
gard all things in their relationships.

It is in relationships and in totalities that life’s
meaning is revealed.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

8i

1924

Since spending the summer in Europe I have
been devoting the entire fall to a development
of our worship service. The various types of
ritualistic services in non-conformist churches I
heard over there appealed to me so much that
I decided to imitate them. Of course the Angli-
can services have their own appeal, but the
technique which makes them possible is beyond
us. For some years I have been having a few
prayer responses, but now I am developing a
program with litanies, confessions, acts of praise
and every other bit of liturgical beauty and
meaning by which the service can be enriched.

It’s a shame we have permitted our services
to become so barren. My only regret is that I
did not wake up in time to build our church
properly for liturgical purposes. There could be
much pleasure in conducting a richly elaborated
liturgical service without the restraint of the
rubrics to which the Anglicans must submit. I
do not know whether the people like the added
beauty in the service as much as I do, but many
have expressed appreciation. It seems to me to
make a great deal of difference in the spiritual

82

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

value of a service to have some unison prayer
with an authentic religious emotion expressed
in a well turned phrase, to have choir responses
for the prayers and moments of silence for quiet
prayer.

The idea that a formless service is more spon-
taneous and therefore more religious than a
formal one is disproved in my own experience.
Only a very few men have ever really put me in
a mood of prayer by their “pastoral prayers.” On
the other hand, a really beautiful worship serv-
ice actually gives me a mystic sense of the di-
vine.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

83

1924

Arrived in today and spoke this noon to a

group of liberal people. The meeting was ar-
ranged by the secretary of the Y.W.C.A. I
poked fun at them a little for enjoying their
theological liberalism so much in this part of
the country, while they were afraid of even the
mildest economic and pohtical heresy. Of
course that didn’t quite apply to the people at
the table, but it does apply to this whole sec-
tion. There is no one quite so ridiculous as a
preacher who prides himself upon his theologi-
cal radicalism in a city where the theological
battle was won a generation ago, while he
meanwhile speaks his convictions on matters of
economics only in anxious whispers.

I was asked to visit (leading preacher)

and see whether I could not interest him in our
organization. He was an interesting study. He
told me of his important connections in the city,
of his tremendous church program, of the way
he had increased the budget of his church, of
his building plans, of the necessity “of fighting
on one front at a time,” of his theological bat-

84 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

ties; and he ended by declining to join the lib-
eral group which sought his aid.

He thought it would not be advisable, consid-
ering his heavy responsibilities, to imperil the
many great “causes” to which he was devoting
his life by identifying himself with a radical
movement. I didn’t mind his cowardice so
much, though he tried to hide it, as his vanity,
which he took no pains to hide. I could just
see him cavorting weekly before his crowd of
doting admirers.

Obviously one of his chief difBculties is that
he is good looking. A minister has enough temp-
tations to vanity without bearing the moral
hazard of a handsome face. If this young fellow
had only been half as homely as old Dr. Gor-
don he might have a chance of acquiring a por-
tion of his grace. But I don’t want to drive
that generahzation too far. I know one or two
saintly preachers who could pose for a collar ad.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

85

1924

Had a letter today informing me that the First

church in has called a new pastor.

After trying futilely to find the right man, who
was to have as much scholarship as his prede-
cessor and more "punch,” they decided to raise
the salary to $15,000. 1 don’t know whether that
was the factor which finally solved their prob-
lem, but at any rate they have the man they
want. I suppose it is not easy to get a combina-
tion of Aristotle and Demosthenes, and on the
current market, that ought to be worth $15,000.
Nevertheless there must be some limit to this
matter of oversized salaries.

There ought to be some questioning, too,
about the growing tendency of churches to
build their congregations around pulpit elo-
quence. What kind of fundamental ethical ques-
tion can a man be eloquent about when he
draws that much cash, particularly since a Croe-
sus or two usually has to supply an undue pro-
portion of it? I don’t know anything about the
prophet of the Lord who accepted this call, but
I venture to prophesy that no sinner in that

86

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

pagan city will quake in his boots in anticipa-
tion of his coming.

The idea of a professional good man is diffi-
cult enough for all of us who are professionally
engaged as teachers of the moral ideal. Of
course, “a man must live,” and it is promised
that if we seek first the kingdom and its right-
eousness “all these things shall be added unto
us.” But I doubt whether Jesus had a $15,000
salary in mind. If the things that are added
become too numerous they distract your atten-
tion terribly. To try to keep your eye on the
main purpose may only result in making you
squint-eyed. I hope the new prophet won’t be-
gin his pastorate with a sermon on the text, “I
count all things but loss.”

OF A TAMED CYNIC

87

1924

I was a little ashamed of what I wrote recently
about ministers’ salaries, but today I was
strangely justified in my criticism. Walking into
a store to buy a hat I met an old friend who
told me about his new preacher. His church had
tried for a long while to secure the right man,
and then by dint of a special campaign they
raised the salary from $6,000 to $10,000. That is
obviously more than most of the people in the
congregation make. He said to me with con-
siderable pride, “You ought to hear our new
preacher. My, but he is a great talker!” Then
he came close and whispered to me out of hear-
ing of the other customers; “He ought to be. We
are paying him ten thousand dollars.” The cyni-
cism was quite unconscious.

88

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1924

I begin to realize how little religious faith de-
pends upon dialectical support. When called
upon to bury some one whose life revealed spir-
itual charm and moral force I can preach the
hope of immortahty with conviction and power.
But funerals of rehgious and moral nondescripts
leave me enervated. I think I could bury a
brazen sinner with more satisfaction. There is
always a note of real tragedy in the life of an
obvious reprobate that gives point to a sermon.
But these Tomlinsons are a trial.

Of course, there is a good deal of pride in
such an attitude, and it is partly due to igno-
rance. As soon as I know the person whose
death is mourned I can enter into the occasion
sympathetically. There is hardly a soul so poor
and flaccid but does not reveal some glimpse of
the eternal in its life. If I happen to lack con-
tact with the deceased I might well remind my-
self that his death is sincerely mourned by those
who are near. It is after all a glorious tribute to
the qualities of human nature that those who
know us best love us most. Perhaps their love is
occasionally no more than a natural attachment
which men conceive for familiar objects.

OF A TAMED CYNIC 89

Funerals are a terrible trial to me, but I must
admit that the stolid courage and quiet grief of
most mourners is a real source of inspiration.
Only occasionally does one meet with hysterical
grief and theatrical and insincere sorrow. How
desperately people brush up their little faith in
times of sorrow! It is quite easy to see that reli-
gious faith prospers because of, and not in spite
of, the tribulations of this world. It is because
this mortal life is felt as an irrelevancy to the
main purpose in life that men achieve the cour-
age to hope for immortality.

90

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1924

We had a union Thanksgiving service today. It
would have been a nice service but for the fact
that the leader could not get over the fact that
four denominations had been able to achieve
unity to undertake such a service. This was
supposed to be a great advance. As a matter of
fact the people in the church were long since
united in dozens of community enterprises. The
men, whatever church they belonged to, at-
tended the same Rotary and Kiwanis clubs and
the women were members of the same hterary
and review clubs.

The church has lost the chance of becoming
the unifying element in our American society.
It is not anticipating any facts. It is merely
catching up very slowly to the new social facts
created by economic and other forces. The
American melting pot is doing its work. The
churches merely represent various European
cultures, lost in the amalgam of American life
and maintaining a separate existence only in
religion.

What we accomplish in the way of church
unity ought to be accepted with hmnility and
not hailed with pride. We are not creating. We
are merely catching up with creation.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

91

1924

Going to St. Louis today a portly and garrulous
gentleman sat back of me and became very
much interested in two nuns who were reading
their prayerbooks. The man, who seemed the
perfect type of successful drummer, felt very
superior to the nuns. How can anyone “fall for
that stuff” m this day and age, he wanted to
know in a loud whisper. “They remind me of
ghosts,” he said.

I had to admit that there was something al-
most unearthly about these black figures with
their white-rimmed hoods. But their faces were
kindly and human, and the face of the drummer
was sensuous and florid. Perhaps the difference
between him and the nuns illustrates the qual-
ity of our “modernity,” though I don’t want to
maintain that he is the perfect type of a mod-
ern man. But we do have a great many moderns
who are emancipated from every kind of reli-
gious disciphne without achieving any new loy-
alty which might qualify the brutal factors m
human life.

It is better that life incarnate some ideal
value, even if mixed with illusion (though any-
thing which has the spirit of love in it is not

92

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

wholly illusion) than that it should express
nothing but the wiU to live. My drumnaer thinks
of himself as a modern in comparison with those
nuns. I looked at him squatting there and
glanced again at the homely but beautiful faces
of the nuns and said to myself: What is modern
and what is ancient? Were there not toads be-
fore there were ghosts and fairies?

OF A TAMED CYNIC

93

1924

Bishop Williams is dead. I sit and stare at the
floor while I say that to myself and try to be-
lieve it. How strangely a vital personahty defies
the facts of death. Nowhere have I seen a per-
sonality more luminous with the Christ spirit
than in this bishop who was also a prophet.
Here was a man who knew how to interpret the
Christian religion so that it meant something in
terms of an industrial civilization. His fearless
protagonism of the cause of democracy in in-
dustry won him the respect and love of the
workers of the city as no other churchman pos-
sessed it.

Yet I am afraid that it must be admitted that
he didn’t change the prevailing attitude of De-
troit industry by a hair’s breadth. He even had
to offer his resignation in the face of iucreasing
hostiUty to his social views. That letter of resig-
nation was incidentally a gem of humble self-
analysis and courageous insistence on the truth
of his doctrine.

He did not change Detroit industry but he
left many of us holding our heads more upright
because of his intelligent and courageous anal-

94

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

ysis of contemporary civilization from the per-
spective of a Christian conscience. If a bishop
with all his prestige could make no bigger dent
upon the prevailing mood of the city, what
chance is there for the rest of us? Perhaps the
best that any of us can do is to say:

Charge once more then and be dumb.

Let the victors when they come,

When the forts of folly fall.

Find thy body by the wall.

Rejoice, said Jesus, not that the devils are
subject unto you but that your names are writ-
ten in heaven. One ought to strive for the refor-
mation of society rather than one’s own perfec-
tion. But society resists every effort to bring its
processes under ethical restraint so stubbornly
that one must finally be satisfied with preserv-
ing one’s moral integrity in a necessary and yet
futile struggle. Of course the struggle is never
as futile as it seems from an immediate perspec-
tive. The bishop did not change Detroit indus-
try, but if the church ever becomes a real
agency of the kingdom of God in an industrial
civilization, his voice, though he is dead, will
be m its counsels.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

95

19^5

When I sit through a church conference I begin
to see a little more clearly why religion is on
the whole so impotent ethically, why the
achievements of the church are so meager com-
pared to its moral pretensions. Sermon after
sermon, speech after speech is based upon the
assumption that the people of the church are
committed to the ethical ideals of Jesus and that
they are the sole or at least chief agents of
redemptive energy in society.

It is very dijSBcult to persuade people who are
committed to a general ideal to consider the
meaning of that ideal in specific situations. It is
even more diflBcult to prompt them to consider
specific ends of social and individual conduct
and to evaluate them in the light of experience.

The church conference begins and ends by
attempting to arouse an emotion of the ideal,
usually in terms of personal loyalty to the per-
son of Jesus, but very little is done to attach the
emotion to specific tasks and projects. Is the
industrial life of our day unethical? Are nations
imperialistic? Is the family disintegrating? Are
young people losing their sense of values? If so.

g6 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

we are told over and over again that nothing
will help but “a new baptism of the spirit,” a
“new revival of religion,” a “great awakening
of the religious consciousness.”

But why not be specific? Why doesn’t the
church ofFer specific suggestions for the applica-
tion of a Christian ethic to the difiiculties of our
day? If that suggestion is made, the answer is
that such a pohcy would breed contention. It
certainly would. No moral project can be pre-
sented and no adventure made without resist-
ance from the traditionalist and debate among
experimentalists. But besides being more effec-
tive, such a course would he more interesting
than this constant bathing in sentimentalities.
If the church could only achieve schisms on
ethical issuesi They would represent life and
reality. Its present schisms are not immoral as
such. They are immoral only in the sense that
they perpetuate issues which have no relevancy
in om day.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

97

1925

The reactions of a group of ministers to an ad-
dress on the relation of rehgion to modern hfe
are always interesting. Invariably there is one
group of men who are pathetically eager to “do
something about it,” to save civilization from its
perils. I think the church will compare favor-
ably with the university in the number of men
who are not blinded to the defects of modem
life and who are not enervated by a sense of
futihty. The university has plenty of men whose
eyes are open, but they despair much more eas-
ily of finding a way out than the preachers. The
ministers have not lost some of that saving
grace, “the foohshness of faith.”

Of course there is always a group of those
who sit sullenly while you harangue them. I
had my eye fixed on one portly and prosperous
priest today who was obviously out of accord
with what I was saying. Of course I have no
right to judge him because he did not agree
with me. But he seemed to me to be on« of
those satisfied and complacent chaplains who
has fed so long at the flesh-pots of Egypt that he
resents anything which disturbs his ease. A man

like that reminds me of the eunuchs of old who
were robbed of their virihty that they might
adorn without endangering their masters’ lux-
urious establishments.

The old gentleman was there too who wanted
to know whether I believed in the deity of Jesus.
He is in every town. He seemed to be a nice
sort, but he wanted to know how I could speak
for an hour on the Christian church without
once mentioning the atonement. Nothing, said
he, hut the blood of Jesus would save America
from its perils. He made quite an impassioned
speech. At first I was going to answer him but
it seemed too useless. I finally told him I be-
lieved in blood atonement too, but since I
hadn’t shed any of the blood of sacrifice which
it demanded I felt unworthy to enlarge upon
the idea.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

99

1925

We went through one of the big automobile
factories today. So artificial is life that these fac-
tories are like a strange world to me though I
have lived close to them for many years. The
foundry interested me particularly. The heat
was terrific. The men seemed weary. Here man-
ual labor is a drudgery and toil is slavery. The
men cannot possibly find any satisfaction in
their work. They simply work to make a hving.
Their sweat and their duU pain are part of the
price paid for the fine cars we all run. And most
of us run the cars without knowing what price
is being paid for them.

Looking at these men the words of Mark-
ham’s “The Man with the Hoe” came to me. A
man with a hoe is a happy creature beside these
sufiEering souls.

"‘The emptiness of ages in his face”

“Who made him dead to rapture and despair,

A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?”

lOO LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

We are all responsible. We all want the things
which the factory produces and none of us is
sensitive enough to care how much in human
values the efficiency of the modern factory
costs. Beside the brutal facts of modern indus-
trial life, how futile are all our homiletical
spoutings! The church is undoubtedly cultivat-
ing graces and preserving spiritual amenities in
the more protected areas of society. But it isn’t
changing the essential facts of modern indus-
trial civilization by a hair’s breadth. It isn’t even
thinking about them.

The morality of the church is anachronistic.
Will it ever develop a moral insight and cour-
age sufficient to cope with the real problems of
modern society? If it does it will require gen-
erations of effort and not a few martyrdoms. We
ministers maintain our pride and self-respect
and our sense of importance only through a vast
and inclusive ignorance. If we knew the world
in which we live a little better we would perish
in shame or be overcome by a sense of futihty.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

101

1925

The new parish organization seems to be work-
ing splendidly. The congregation is divided into
nine sections, each with a man and woman as
parish leaders. Each section meets twice a year
in cottage meetings, and meanwhile the leaders
and their assistants visit the various families,
particularly the new members and those who
are sick. Some splendid new leaders have al-
ready been developed by this plan. Since I must
be absent from the city so much, the plan is all
the more valuable.

Last Sunday we discussed in the class
whether a church ought to develop fellowship
for its own sake or whether fellowship ought to
be the inevitable by-product of unifying con-
victions. I suppose a small church in a hostile
environment would not have to worry about
fellowship. If people fight shoulder to shoulder
they will be brothers. But even the most heroic
church is not so definitely in conflict with the
society in which it lives that you can really
count on that kind of fellowship. A local con-
gregation is, after all, a social organism in which
heroic idealism is expressed in an occasional ad-

lOZ

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

venture, if at all, rather than in a constant ten-
sion between its principles and the moral medi-
ocrities of the world.

Meanwhile, it seems to me to be worth while
to cultivate the graces of neighborliness merely
for their own sake. This is particularly true in
the large city where life is so impersonal and
where the church has a fine opportunity to per-
sonalize it a little. What surprises me is the
readiness with which people give themselves
to various forms of mutual aid once they are
prompted to engage in them.

Most people lack imagination much more
than they lack good will. If someone points
out what can be done and what ought to be
done there is usually someone to do it.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

103

19^5

On a Western Trip

Out here on the Pacific coast, particularly in
Los Angeles, one is forcibly impressed with the
influence of environment upon religion. Every
kind of cult seems to flourish in Los Angeles,
and most of them are pantheistic. Every sorry
oriental religious nostrum is borrowed in the
vain effort to give meaning to pointless lives and
to impart a thrill to vacuous existences. The
pantheism is partly due, no doubt, to the salu-
brious nature of the southern California climate.
Wherever nature is unusually benignant, men
tend to identify God and the natural world and
to lose all moral vigor in the process.

But that is hardly the whole explanation.
There are too many retired people in Los An-
geles. They left the communities where their
personalities had some social significance in or-
der to vegetate on these pleasant shores. In this
sorry and monotonous existence they try to save
their self-respect by grasping for some religious
faith which will not disturb their ease by any
too rigorous ethical demands. Of course Aimee
Semple McPherson is more successful than the

104 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

pantheistic cults. She fights the devil and gives
the people a good show. She storms against the
vices which flourish in this paradise without
touching their roots. Furthermore she has the
art of casting the glow of religious imagination
over sensuality without changing its essential
nature. In that art she seems to be typical rather
than unique for this whole civilization. If she
is unique it is only in her success.

They are always telling me that Detroit is the
most typically American of our cities. Perhaps
Detroit is typical of the America which works
feverishly to get what it wants, while Los An-
geles is typical of the America which has se-
cured what it wants. On the whole I prefer the
former to the latter. An honest enthusiasm even
for inadequate ends is better than a vacuous
existence from which even the charm of an
imperfect ambition has departed. Of course the
paganism of power is more dangerous than the
paganism of pleasure, but from the perspective
of a mere observer it is more interesting. Who
would not prefer Napoleon to his imbecile
brothers who merely luxuriated in the prosper-
ity created by his ambition?

Only in the case of complete innocency, as
that of a child's, is life more beautiful in repose
than in activity. Character is created by a bal-
ance of tensions, and is more lovely even when

OF A TAMED CYNIC I05

the balance is imperfect than in a state of com-
plete relaxation.

Of course Los Angeles has more culture than
our midwestern cities. Culture flourishes in lei-
sure and sometimes redeems it. But it will be a
long time before this kind of leisure will pro-
duce more than dilettantism.

io6

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1925

We had a communion service tonight (Good
Friday) and I preached on the text “We preach
Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block
and to the Gentiles foolishness, but to them that
are called the power of God and the wisdom
of God.” I don’t think I ever felt greater joy in
preaching a sermon. How experience and life
change our perspectives! It was only a few years
ago that I did not know what to make of the
cross; at least I made no more of it than to rec-
ognize it as a historic fact which proved the ne-
cessity of paying a high price for our ideals.
Now I see it as a symbol of ultimate reality.

It seems pathetic to me that liberalism has
too little appreciation of the tragedy of life to
miderstand the cross and orthodoxy insists too
much upon the absolute uniqueness of the sacri-
fice of Christ to make the preaching of the cross
effective. How can anything be uniquely potent
if it is absolutely imique? It is because the cross
of Christ symbolizes something in the very
heart of reality, something in universal experi-
ence that it has its central place in history. Life
is tragic and the most perfect type of moral

OF A TAMED CYNIC

107

beauty inevitably has at least a touch of the
tragic in it. Why? That is not so easy to explain.
But love pays such a high price for its objectives
and sets its objectives so high that they can
never be attained. There is therefore always a
foolish and a futile aspect to love’s quest which
give it the note of tragedy.

What makes this tragedy redemptive is that
the foolishness of love is revealed as wisdom in
the end and its futility becomes the occasion for
new moral striving. About heroes, saints, and
saviors it must always remain true "'that they,
without us should not be made perfect.”

io8

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1925

I wonder if the strong sense of frustration which
comes over me so frequently on Sunday eve-
ning and to which many other parsons have
confessed, is merely due to physical lassitude or
whether it arises from the fact that every
preacher is trying to do a bigger thing than he
is equal to — and fails. I have an uneasy feeling
that it may be native honesty of the soul assert-
ing itself. Aren’t we preachers talking altogether
too much about what can be proved and justi-
fied only in experience?

OF A TAMED CYNIC

109

1925

Mr. spoke at a luncheon meeting today.

He made everyone writhe as he pictured the in-
justices and immoralities of our present indus-
trial system. The tremendous eflFect of his
powerful address was partially offset by the
bitterness with which he spoke and by the ill-
concealed assumption that his hearers would
not care enough about what he said to change
their attitudes. I suppose it is difficult to escape
bitterness when you have the eyes to see and
the heart to feel what others are too blind and
too callous to notice. The mordant note in the
discourse of the prophet may not only be inevi-
table but pedagogically effective.

Perhaps there is no other way to arouse a peo-
ple who are so oblivious to the real issues of
modern civilization. Yet I am compelled to
doubt the pedagogical benefits of this approach.
While I use it myself, sometimes I don’t like to
have it used on me. It freezes my soul. And
there is usually some injustice, some insupporta-
ble generalization, involved in this method
which obsesses my mind and makes it difficult

110

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

for me to see the general truth with which the
speaker wants to impress me.

If I had to choose between this bitterness and
the blandness of many pulpiteers I would, of
course, choose the former. Better a warrior’s
grimness than the childish sentimentalities of
people who are too ignorant or too selfish to
bear the burdens of the world. There are too
many men in the pulpit who look and act for
all the world like cute little altar boys who have
no idea that the mass in which they are partici-
pating is a dramatization of tragedy.

Yet there seems to be no reason why a war-
rior ought not to maintain his effectiveness and
yet overcome his bitterness, particularly if he is
a warrior who is fighting ‘not against flesh and
blood but against spiritual wickedness in high
places.” The one certain cure for a bitter spirit
seems to me a realization that the critic is him-
self involved in the sins which he castigates.
Man is imperialistic and even parasitic in his
nature. He lives his life at the expense of other
lives. By both outer compulsion and inner re-
straint, his expansive desires are brought under
sufficient discipline to make social life possible.

But there is no social life, not even in the
family, which does not illustrate this native im-
perialism in hfe. Look at all these professional
people, preachers, professors and doctors! Even

OF A TAMED CYNIC

111

in the moment in which they declare their su-
periority over the commercial world, where life
is more frankly selfish and more obviously bru-
tal, they illustrate the common human frailty
by some petty jockeying for position, or some
jealous depreciation of the success of others,
or some childish ego-assertion.

The pessimist might draw the conclusion
from this fact that we can make progress only
by a reorganization of society and never by a
reformation of human nature. But that conclu-
sion does not seem to me to follow from the
facts. We do need a constant reorganization
of social processes and systems, so that society
will not aggravate but mitigate the native im-
perialistic impulses of man. The greed of mod-
ern civilization is partly an expression of a
universal human tendency and partly a vice
peculiar to a civilization with our kind of pro-
ductive process.

But meanwhile we can not afford to leave the
capacities of man out of the picture. There
seems to me no reason why we can not cure
people of greed by making them conscious of
both the nature and the consequences of their
expansive tendencies. Only we ought to realize,
while we are doing it, that our own life reveals
some refined form of the sin which we abhor.
That will make it possible to undertake the task

112

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

of world regeneration with a spirit of patience
and humility.

The modern pulpit does not face this problem
because it is not really preaching repentance. Its
estimate of human nature is too romantic to give
people any appreciation of the brutahties of life
which are frequently most real where they are
most covert — in the lives of the respectable
classes. But whenever a prophet is born, either
inside or outside of the church, he does face
i the problem of preaching repentance without

I bitterness and of criticizing without spiritual

{ pride.

It is a real problem. Mr. is effective,

; ! after a fashion, because he is an itinerant. We

f ! only have to hear him once in so many years.

; , But think of sitting Sunday after Sunday under

\ ■ some professional holy man who is constantly

‘ asserting his egotism by criticizing yours. I

« ‘ would rebel if I were a layman. A spiritual

] j leader who has too many illusions is useless.

I ’ One who has lost his illusions about mankind

I and retains Iris illusions about himself is insuf-

I ferable. Let the process of disillusionment con-

tinue until the self is included. At that point, of
i course, only religion can save from the enerva-

I tion of despair. But it is at that point that true

i i religion is bom.

I '

OF A TAMED CYNIC

113

1926

Preachers who are in danger of degenerating
into common scolds might learn a great deal
from H ’s preaching style. I am not think-

ing now of the wealth of scholarship which en-
riches his utterances but of his technique in
uniting religious emotion with aspiration rather
than with duty. If he wants to convict Detroit
of her sins he preaches a sermon on “the City
of God,” and lets all the Hmitations of this get-
rich-quick metropolis emerge by implication. If
he wants to flay the denommationalism of the
churches he speaks on some topic which gives
him the chance to delineate the ideal and in-
clusive church.

On the whole, people do not achieve great
moral heights out of a sense of duty. You may
be able to compel them to maintain certain min-
imum standards by stressing duty, but the high-
est moral and spiritual achievements depend
not upon a push but upon a pull. People must
be charmed into righteousness. The language of
aspiration rather than that of criticism and com-
mand is the proper pulpit language. Of course
it has its limitations. In every congregation

114 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

there are a few perverse sinners who can go
into emotional ecstasies about the “City of God”
and yet not see how they are helping to make
their city a hell-hole.

It is not a good thing to convict sin only by
implication. Sometimes the cruel word of cen-
sure must be uttered. “Woe unto you Scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites” was spoken by one
who incarnated tenderness. The language of
aspiration is always in danger of becoming soft;
but it is possible to avoid that pitfall and yet
not sink into a habit of cheap scolding. I like the
way H does it.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

115

1926

Cynics sometimes insinuate that you can love
people only if you don’t know them too well;
that a too intimate contact with the foibles and
idiosyncrasies of men will tempt one to be a
misanthrope. I have not found it so. I save my-
self from cynicism by knowing individuals, and
knowing them intimately. If I viewed humanity
only from some distant and high perspective I
could not save myself from misanthropy. I think
the reason is simply that people are not as de-
cent in their larger relationship as in their more
intimate contacts.

Look at the industrial enterprise anywhere
and you find criminal indiflFerence on the part of
the strong to the fate of the weak. The lust for
power and the greed for gain are the dominant
note in business. An industrial overlord will not
share his power with his workers until he is
forced to do so by tremendous pressure. The
middle classes, with the exception of a small
minority of intelligentsia, do not aid the worker
in exerting this pressure. He must fight alone.

The middle classes are in fact quite incapable
of any high degree of social imagination. Their
experience is too limited to give them a clear

,10 LEAVES EEOM THE NOTEBOOE

plot«e Of the real issues in modern indnsUkl
Bfe Nonunion mines may organize m West
Wgil and reduce miners to a starvation wage

"tr "m

it is more <iiffi-V°s

for them than to win contributors for the mis
sions of the church. America may arouse Ae

resentment of the world by its

0ood people of the American prairie will feel

Nothing but injured innocence from these Euro-
pean and Asiatic reactions to »«

^ Men are elearly not very lovely m the m .
OnTin maintain eonHdenee in them only by
°ewmg then, at dose range. Then one mj ee
TClLl nobility of unselfish parenthood, the
Sh!S ea^ttes" of father and mother to ffve
children more of life than they enjoyed;
the faithfulness of wives to their emng us

bands; the grateful “f "thd

fnr their old parents; the effort of this and mat

courageous soul to maintain personal mtegnty
ia a iorld which continually tempts to dis-
honesty, and the noble aspirations of he^ts tha
must seem quite unheroic to the unheeding

The same middle classes which seem so blind
to the larger moral problems of socijy have^
after all, the most wholesome family We of an)
group in society.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

117

1926

Here is a preacher whom I have suspected of
cowardice for years because he never deviated
by a hair’s breadth from the economic preju-
dices of his wealthy congregation. I thought he
knew better but was simply afraid to speak out
and seek to qualify the arch-conservatism of his
complacent crowd with a little Christian ideal-
ism. But I was mistaken. I have just heard that
he recently included in his sermon a tirade
against women who smoke cigarettes and lost
almost a hundred of his fashionable parishion-
ers. He is evidently not lacking courage in mat-
ters upon which he has deep convictions.
Nobody, for that matter, lacks courage when
convictions are strong. Courage is simply the
rigorous devotion to one set of values against
other values and interests.

Protestantism’s present impotence in qualify-
ing the economic and social life of the nation is
due not so much to the pusillanimity of the
clerical leaders as to its individualistic tradi-
tions. The church honestly regards it of greater
moment to prevent women from smoking ciga-
rettes than to establish more Christian standards
in industrial enterprise. A minister who tries to

Il8 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

prevent fasMonable women from smoking ciga-
rettes is simply trying to enforce a code of per-
sonal habit established in the middle classes of
the nineteenth century upon the plutocratic
classes of the twentieth centirry. The eflFort is
not only vain but has little to do with essential
Christianity.

I would not deny that some real values may
be at stake in such questions of personal habits.
But they affect the dominant motives which de-
termine the spirituality or sensuality of character
but slightly. The church does not seem to realize
how unethical a conventionally respectable life
may be.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

119

1926

Some of these young business men in the con-
gregation would compare favorably with any
leaders who grace the pulpits of our churches.
Their family relations seem to be almost ideal.
They are trying honestly to live a Christian life
in their business relations. Lack of power some-
times means that they cannot go as far in experi-
menting with Christian values as they would
like. But they are not complacent. They are
eager to learn, and are fair and careful in their
judgments. Their virtues are acquired with less
self-conscious effort than those of more studious
people. They think and plan, but they do not
stop the adventure of life to meditate upon its
diflBculties and inadequacies.

Extrovert people are on the whole happier
and more wholesome than the introverts. If they
do not act too unreflectively, they are able to
define their goals fairly accurately and they cer-
tainly pursue them with more robust energy
than do the moody intellectuals.

It is surprising, too, how considerate and gen-
erous they are in their relations with one another
and with me. They take my impetuosities for

120 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

granted and exhibit little pettiness in their deal-
ings with one another. The women do not get
along quite so weU together. They are too new
at playing the game of life with others. But I
will not belabor that point. I may be exhibiting
bachelor prejudices in making it. At any rate I
am wilhng to compare this group of young men
who bear the burdens of our church with any
faculty group in the country. They can teach
you nothing about philosophy, but they do teach
you much about life and they reenforce your
confidence in human nature.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

121

1926

After Attending a Jewish-Christian Conference

Fellowship with peoples of other religious groups
always results in the grateful experience of dis-
covering unsuspected treasuries of common sen-
timent and conviction. More contact between
enlightened Jews and Christians would change
the emphasis in many a Christian homily. This
conference was rewarding in many ways. But at
one point I fail absolutely to understand my
Jewish friends. All of them, high and low, intelli-
gent and those who are less so, insist that the
story of the crucifixion is the real root of all or
of most anti-Semitism, and they seem to have
some vain hope that broadminded Christians
will be able and willing to erase the story of
the cross from the gospel record. The least they
expect is that the odium of the cross be placed
upon the Romans rather than the Jews.

I can see that there would be some advantage
in ascribing a historic sin to a people who live
only in history and who can therefore not be
victimized by belated vindictive prejudices. But
would that be history? The record is pretty

122

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

plain and the fact that the Jewish elders rather
than Roman soldiers were the real crucifiers is
supported not only by evidence but by logic.
The prophets of religion are always martyred by
the religious rather than by the irreligious. The
Romans, being irreligious, were not sufficiently
fanatical to initiate the crucifixion.

It must be admitted that the phraseology of
the Fourth Gospel may easily incite the preju-
dices of the ignorant. But the enlightened will
find a better method to allay any anti-Semitic
feeling which may result from the record than
to ascribe the crucifixion to the Romans. They
need only ascribe it to the general limitations of
human nature and society. Jews are not the only
people who martyr and who have martyred their
prophets. The history of every nation and every
people makes the crucifixion a perennial and a
universal historical fact.

That is the very reason why Christians can no
more afford to eliminate the cross than they can
ascribe it to the fortunately extinct Romans.
Anyone who incarnates the strategy of love as
Jesus did meets the resistance and incites the
passions of human society. The respectabilities
of any human society are based upon moral com-
promises and every community is as anxious to
defend these compromises against the prophet
who presents some higher moral logic as against

OF A TAMED CYNIC I23

the criminal who imperils the structure from
below.

The cross is central in the Christian religion,
moreover, because it symbolizes a cosmic as well
as an historic truth. Love conquers the world,
but its victory is not an easy one. The price of
all creativity and redemption is pain. Most mod-
ern religionists who understand the God of crea-
tion and not the God of redemption fail in under-
standing the latter precisely because they do
not see how closely related creation and re-
demption are. Which simply means that they
don't understand that creation is a painful proc-
ess in which the old does not give way to the
new without trying to overcome it.

The cross of Jesus is truly the most adequate
symbol of both the strategy and the destiny of
love not only in history but in the universe. We
may grant our Jewish brethren that it is not the
only possible symbol of eternal verities, but it is
a true one, and it cannot therefore be sacrificed.

Incidentally, I believe that Jewish people
have a tendency to overestimate the religious
bases of anti-Semitism. Racial rather than re-
ligious prejudice is the dominant factor in this
social disease. All ignorant people hate or fear
those who deviate from their type. Religious
divergences may be as important as cultural and
physical differences, but they are not dominant.

leaves from the notebook

The Tews could accept our religion and if they
maintained their racial integrity wodd
suffer from various types of social ostracism
After all the Negroes are Christian, ^ut th
hasn’t helped them much. Some Jews dislike
tis comparison very much. They do not like to
be put upon the same basis with the Negroes^
Lt\at reveals um-ealistic social analysis. The

®aXg^oupisintolerantofminoritieswh^^^^

2L cime is inferior, superior or equal.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

1^5

1926

One is hardly tempted to lose confidence in the
future after listening to a group of young people
discussing the important problems of life. Of
course the number who approach the future re-
flectively and with real appreciation for the
issues involved in the readjustment of traditions
to new situations is not large. There are not
many such groups and even in these the num-
ber who really take part in the discussion is
small.

Nevertheless their wholesomeness is impres-
sive. I can’t always withhold a sense of pity for
them. With traditions crumbling and accepted
standards inundated by a sea of moral relativity,
they have a desperate task on their hands to con-
struct new standards adequate for their happi-
ness. There is always the temptation to be too
rebellious or too traditional, to be scornful of the
old standard even when it preserves obvious vir-
tues, or to flee to it for fear of being lost in the
confusion of new standards. Yet the best way of
avoiding these dangers is to subject them to the
scrutiny of a thoughtful group which knows

^ 1.EAVKS FBOM THE NOTEBOOK

how 10 disoom the limitations of any position,

“'on towhole the discussions of our young
1.\t the church seem to be more who e-
than those in which I participate in the
X" of these young folis have as-

sulnrf responsibOities and are therefore not as
inchned to be their

the college , vitality to their dis-

"™Xnd ley^Tot enervLd by that
rX sophistication which imperils the col-
Xonth and tempts him to end every tens-
in and discount every discovery with the re-

floptinn “This also is vanity.

I really wonder how we are going to build a
eivtotion sufBciently intelligent to overcome

^XX-LtfXnX"

frwi"S"ehindofsop~
which destroys all values by its skepticism an
Tlfypns every enthusiasm by its cynicism. In
Sica that possibility is particularly danger-
because our intellectualism is of the sopho-
moric type. There is no generation or only one
seneraSn, between the pioneers who conquer ed
L prairies and these youngsters who are trying
tlsorb the whole of modern culture m four
years. The traditions against which they react

OF A TAMED CYNIC

127

are less adequate, less modified by experience
and culture, than those which inform the peoples
of Europe.

And the teachers who guide them into the
world of new knowledge are frequently them-
selves so recently emancipated that they try to
obscure their cultural, religious and moral herit-
ages by extreme iconoclasm. It is difficult to be
patient with one of these smart aleck Ph.D.’s on
a western campus who imagines that he can im-
press the world with his learning by being scorn-
ful of everything that was thought or done before
this century.

128

leaves from the notebook

A letter from Hyde brings tbe sad news that

C has lost his pastorate. I am not surpnsed.

He is courageous hut tactless. Undoubtedly he
will regard himself as one of the Lord s mar yrs
Lhaps he is. Perhaps loyalty to prmcrple will
Lays appear as tactlessness from the perspec-
tive of tLe who don’t agree with you. But I

r and still think him wanting

M least he Is pedagoglcaly

into a congregation whidj has

been fed from its very infancy on the individual-
istic ethic of Protestantism and which is im-
mersed in a civilization where ethical individ-

X runs riot, and expect to develop a socid

conscience among the people

have you a right to insinuate that they are all

hypocrites just because they don’t see what you

'L course it is not easy to speab the truth
in love without losing a part of the an

therefore one ought not be too critical of those
who put their emphasis on the truth rather than
on love. But if a man is not willing to try, at

OF A TAMED CYNIC 120

least, to be pedagogical, and if in addition be
suffers from a martyr complex, he has no place
in the ministry. Undoubtedly there are more
ministers who violate their conscience than such
as suffer for conscience sake. But that is no
reason why those who have a robust conscience
should not try to master the pedagogical art.
Perhaps if they would learn nothing else but
to be less emotional and challenging in the pul-
pit and more informative and educational not
only in the pulpit but in their work with smaller
groups, they could really begin to change the
viewpoints and perspectives of their people.

130

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1926

Spoke tonight to the Churchmen’s Club of

. The good Bishop who introduced me was

careful to disavow aU my opinions before I
Uttered them. He assmred the brethren, how-
ever, that I would make them think. I am get-
ting tired of these introductions which are in-
tended to impress the speaker with the Chris-
tian virtue of the audience and its willingness
to listen to other than conventional opinions.
The chairman declares in effect, “Here is a
harebrained fellow who talks nonsense. But we
are Christian gentlemen who can listen with
patience and sympathy to even the most impos-
sible opinions.” It is just a device to destroy
the force of a message and to protect the sensi-
tive souls who might be rudely shocked by a
religious message which came in conflict with
their interests and prejudices.

There is something pathetic about the timid-
ity of the rehgious leader who is always afraid
of what an honest message on controversial
issues might do to his organization. I often
wonder when I read the eleventh chapter of
Hebrews in which faith and courage are prac-
tically identified whether it is psychologically

correct to assume that the one flows from the
other. Courage is a rare human achievement. If
it seems to me that preachers are more cow-
ardly than other groups; that may he because
I know myself. But I must confess that I haven’t
discovered much courage in the ministry. The
average parson is characterized by suavity and
circumspection rather than by any robust forti-
tude. I do not intend to be mean in my criticism
because I am a coward myself and find it tre-
mendously difficult to run counter to general
opinion. Yet religion has always produced some
martyrs and heroes.

I suppose religion in its most vital form does
make men indifferent to popular approval. The
aposde Paul averred that it was a small thing
to be judged of men because he was seeking the
approval of God. In a genuinely religious soul
faith does seem to operate in that way. Issues
are regarded sub specie aeternitatis and the
judgment of contemporaries becomes insignif-
icant. But the average man fashions his stand-
ards in the light of prevailing customs and opin-
ions. It could hardly be expected that every
religious leader would be filled with prophetic
ardor and heedless courage. Many good men are
naturally cautious. But it does seem that the
unique resource of religion ought to give at
least a touch of daring to the religious com-
munity and the religious leader.

13 ^

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1926

The excitement about the Federation of Labor
convention in Detroit has subsided, but there
are echoes of the event in various magazines.
Several ministers have been commended for
^"courage'^ because they permitted labor leaders
to speak in their churches who represented
pretty much their own convictions and said
pretty much what they had been saying for
years.

It does seem pretty bad to have the churches
lined up so solidly against labor and for the
open shop policy of the town. The ministers are
hardly to blame, except if they are to be con-
demned for not bringing out the meaning of
Christianity for industrial relations more clearly
in their ministry previous to the moment of
crisis. As it was, few of the churches were suflB-
ciently liberal to be able to risk an heretical
voice in their pulpits. The idea that these A. F.
of L. leaders are dangerous heretics is itself a
rather illuminating clue to the mind of Detroit.
I attended several sessions of the convention
and the men impressed me as having about the

OF A TAMED CYNIC

133

same amount of daring and imagination as a
group of village bankers.

The ministers of the country are by various
methods dissociating themselves from the De-
troit churches and are implying that they would
have acted more generously in a like situation.
Perhaps so. There are few cities in which wealth,
suddenly acquired and proud of the mechanical
efficiency which produced it, is so little mel-
lowed by social intelligence. Detroit produces
automobiles and is not yet willing to admit that
the poor automata who are geared in on the
production lines have any human problems.

Yet we dijffer only in degree from the rest of
the country. The churches of America are on
the whole thoroughly committed to the interests
and prejudices of the middle classes. I think it is
a bit of unwarranted optimism to expect them
to make any serious contribution to the reor-
ganization of society. I still have hopes that they
will become sufficiently intelligent and heroic
to develop some qualifying considerations in the
great industrial struggle, but I can no longer
envisage them as really determining factors in
the struggle. Neither am I able for this reason
to regard them as totally useless, as some of the
critics do.

The ethical reconstruction of modern indus-
trial society is, to be sure, a very important

134 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

problem, but it is not the only concern of man-
kind. The spiritual amenities and moral decen-
cies which the churches help to develop and
preserve in the private lives of individuals are
worth something for their own sake. Yet it must
be obvious that if anyone is chosen by talent
and destiny to put his life into the industrial
struggle, the church is hardly his best vehicle.

The chmrch is like the Red Cross service in
war time. It keeps hfe from degenerating into a
consistent inhumanity, but it does not materially
alter the fact of the struggle itself. The Red
Cross neither wins the war nor abohshes it.
Since the struggle between those who have and
those who have not is a never-ending one,
society will always be, in a sense, a battle-
ground. It is therefore of some importance that
human loveliness be preserved outside of the
battle lines. But those who are engaged in this
task ought to realize that the brutahties of the
conflict may easily negate the most pamstaking
hmnanizing efforts behind the lines, and that
these efforts may become a method for evadiag
the dangers and risks of the battlefield.

If religion is to contribute anything to the
solution of the industrial problem, a more heroic
type of rehgion than flourishes in the average
church must be set to the task. I don’t beheve
that the men who are driven by that kind of

religion need to dissociate themselves from the
churches, but they must bind themselves to-
gether in more effective association than they
now possess.

136

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1926

After preaching at University this morn-
ing I stopped oflF at and dropped in at the

Presbyterian church for the evening service.
The service was well attended and the music
was very good. The minister had a sermon
which might best be described as a fulsome
eulogy of Jesus Christ. I wonder whether ser-
mons hke that mean anything. He just piled up
adjectives. Every hero of ancient and modern
times was briefly described in order that he
might be made to bow before the superior vir-
tue of the Lord. But the whole thing left me
completely cold. The superiority of Jesus was
simply dogmatically asserted and never ade-
quately analyzed. There was not a thing in the
sermon that would give the people a clue to the
distinctive genius of Jesus or that would help
them to use the resources of his life for the
solution of their own problems.

Through the whole discourse there ran the
erroneous assumption that Christians are real
followers of Jesus and no effort was made to
describe the wide chasm which yawns between
the uncompromising idealism of the Galilean

and the cxarrent morality. I wonder how many
sermons of that type are still being preached. If
that sermon is typical it would explain much of
the conventional tameness of the church.

How much easier it is to adore an ideal char-
acter than to emulate it.

138

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1926

That resolution we passed in our pastors’ meet-
ing, calling upon the police to be more rigorous
in the enforcement of law, is a nice admission of
defeat upon the part of the church. Every one
of our cities has a crime problem, not so much
because the police are not vigilant as because
great masses of men in an urban community are
undisciplined and chaotic souls, emancipated
from the traditions which guided their fathers
and incapable of forming new and equally po-
tent cultural and moral restraints. The children
of the puritans are in this respect no better than
the children of the immigrants. Both have re-
acted against traditions which do not fit their
new circumstances and both are unable to
escape license by new and better standards.

Perhaps the real reason that we live such
chaotic lives in urban communities is because
a city is not a society at all, and moral standards
are formed only in societies and through the
sense of mutual obligation which neighbors feel
for one another. A big city is not a society held
together by human bonds. It is a mass of in-
dividuals, held together by a productive process.

Its people are spiritually isolated even though
they are mechanically dependent upon one an-
other. In such a situation it is difficult to create
and preserve the moral and cultural traditions
which each individual needs to save his life
from anarchy.

AU of us do not hve in moral chaos. But in
so far as we escape it, it is due to our loyalty
to religious, moral and cultural traditions which
have come out of other ages and other circum-
stances. That is why churches, Protestant, Cath-
olic and Jewish, however irrelevant their ethical
idealism may be to the main facts of an indus-
trial civilization, are nevertheless indispensable.
It is enough that our society should be morally
chaotic without also losing the kind of moral
restraint which still determines the life of many
individuals.

There is something very pathetic about the
efforts of almost every one of our large cities to
restore by police coercion what has been lost by
the decay of moral and cultural traditions. But
of course we do have to save ourselves from
anarchy, even if it must be done by force. Only
I think the church would do well to leave the
police problem alone. If violence must be used
temporarily, let the state do so without undue
encouragement from the church. The church
must work in another field and if it has failed

140 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

in that field, it cannot recoup its failures by
giving advice to the police department. The
priest as a sublimated policeman is a sorry
spectacle.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

141

1926

We were discussing the first commandment in
the preparatory class today. The boys were try-
ing to see whether "Thou shalt have no other
Gods before me” meant anything in modern fife.
It is a constant source of surprise and delight
to see with what profundity these boys and girls
deal with the problems of life. They decided
that anything that we loved more than God was
in effect another god. But how do we love God,
I asked. There were the usual answers which
show how some children still identify religion
with religious practices and customs, particu-
larly Sunday observance. But one of of the boys
came through with this answer, “We love God
by loving the best we know.” That seemed to
me not bad at all.

Now we put on the blackboard all those
interests which threatened to become gods to
us; money, clothes (volunteered by a girl, of
course), automobiles, eating, playing. We took
up each one of these interests and tried to deter-
mine when they were in danger of becoming too
central in life. On automobiles the boys didn’t
have much conscience except that they thought

142 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

one ought not to clean them on Sunday. They
take the cult of the automobile for granted as
everyone else. The girls had quite a time defin-
ing the place where clothes cease to be a legit-
imate interest and become an obsession. I was
probably a poor one to lead them in that dis-
cussion.

On the matter of eating there was consider-
able difficulty. “We have to eat to grow,” said
one of the boys. Correct answer. When then, is
eating a form of idolatry? “When we eat all the
time,” suggested another boy. That left Junior
in a corner. “I like to eat most all the time,” he
confessed ruefully. How can a hungry boy be
anything but a sceptic about a philosophy of
values which does not have eating at the center
of it? Thus do the necessities of a robust organ-
ism defy the value schemes prompted by tradi-
tion or arrived at by reflection.

Jrmior just about stopped our discussion of
comparative values by that confession, “I like to
eat most all the time,” and I couldn’t help but
think that my pedagogical impotence before
this demand of natural life was closely akin to
the impotence of the church before a youthful
and vigorous national life, immersed in physical
values and intent upon physical satisfactions.
Our youthful nation is also declaring, “I love to
eat most all the time”; and the error in its judg-

ment is not easily overcome by preachment and
precept until time and experience will show it
the limits of animal satisfactions and teach it
that man does not live by bread alone.

144

LEAVES FEOM THE NOTEBOOK

1926

I had a letter from a young preacher today who
told me how he was suffering for truth’s sake.
He had merely been telling his congregation
that Jesus was a great spiritual teacher, as was
Confucius and Laotsze, and that the Christ idea
was the product of Greek legend and ancient
mythology. His good people were so ignorant,
he thought, that they failed to show proper
appreciation of his learning and resented his
iconoclasm.

I find myself reacting violently to the sopho-
moric cocksureness of this young fellow. I sup-
pose I am getting old and have made those com-
promises with the devil of superstition against
which the editor of the Christian Register warns
so hysterically. But for the life of me I can no
more reduce Jesus to the status of a mere Gali-
lean dreamer and teacher than I can accept the
orthodox Christologies. The person who can
make no distinction between a necessary sym-
bolism and mythology seems to me no better
than the wooden-headed conservative who in-
sists that every bit of religious symbolism and

poetry must be accepted literally and meta-
physically.

It is not easy to define the God idea. Scien-
tifically I suppose God is “the element of spirit-
uahty which is integral to reahty,” but for all
practical and rehgious purposes I find it both
helpful and justified to define him by saying that
“God is Hke Jesus.” The rJtimate nature of
reahty cannot be grasped by science alone;
poetic imagination is as necessary as scientific
precision. Some of the supposedly ignorant peas-
ants against whom my youthful friend is draw-
ing his heroic sword may have more truth on
their side than any fresh young theologue could
possibly realize.

146

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1926

In the young men’s class this morning we con-
tinued our discussion of the Sermon on the
Mount. The boys have been making some inter-
esting contributions. On the whole they are
skeptical of the practicabihty of the demands
which Jesus makes in the matter of trust and
love and forgiveness. It is rather interesting to
have this revelation of the basic cynicism of
even the adolescent mind. They think that to
follow Jesus “would put a business man out of
business in no time,” as one expressed it today.
Of course, it is better to see the difficulties than
to engage in some kind of sentimental avowal
of Christian faith without realizing how stub-
bornly liEe resists the ideal.

After all, those boys are up against what St.
Anthony saw when he was tempted by the
vision of the young woman and the old woman.
The one meant life but also lust, and the other
meant faith but also death. At least that is the
way Flaubert has it. It is certainly not easy to
separate life from lust without destroying life.
Yet Jesus came to give us a more abundant life.

“Maybe it would work if we tried it hard

enough,” thought one of the boys today when
we discussed the practicability of trusting peo-
ple. That may be the answer to the whole ques-
tion.

148

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1926

Bishop and I shared the platform tonight.

Fortunately, I spoke first so that I did not have
to compete with his powerful eloquence. His
sermon warmed the heart, but it was based upon
the uncritical assumption that modem Christi-
anity is an exact replica of primitive Christianity
and is characterized by the same qualities of
heroism and faith. There was a disquieting
tendency to patronize in the good man’s de-
meanor. I should think it would be a very dif-
ficult achievement for a bishop to be a real
Christian. The position is bound to aggravate the
incHnation to pride which all of us possess. I do
not know many bishops intimately. The few that
I have known well have been singularly free of
arrogance; but they were unusual, for they were
saved by a sense of humor which is not fre-
quently found in the pulpit and certainly hardly
ever in the episcopacy.

“Be not ye called rabbi,” said Jesus, “and call
no man father upon earth, for one is your father
which is in heaven.” I am not interested in apply-
ing the words of Jesus literally, but it seems to
me that the principle involved in these words

OF A TAMED CYNIC

149

would wipe out the episcopacy. It wouldn’t
leave much justification either for “The Rever-
end Doctor.” Of course the Christian community
caimot do without leaders. But it might learn to
save them from pride and arrogance.

The highest type of leadership maintains it-
self by its intrinsic worth, sans panoply, pomp
and power. Of course, there are never enough
real leaders to go around. Wherefore it becomes
necessary to dress some men up and by other
artificial means to give them a prestige and
power which they could not win by their own
resources. But it would be well if the church
realized how dangerous power and prestige are,
and how easily they corrupt a man’s spiritual
integrity.

It is certainly not to the credit of the church
that it is less eager than the democratic state to
circumscribe the authority and socialize the
power of the leader. The Methodists try to pre-
serve the proper spirit of humihty among the
bishops by relegating them to parhamentary
impotence once every four years. But who
wouldn’t be willing to suffer for that brief period
for the sake of the power and authority which
the bishop exercises for the rest of the quad-
rennium?

Somewhere I read the observation of an an-
thropologist that naked savages could never

OF A TAMED CYNIC

151

1927

An impertinent youngster at the formn (mid-
western college ) accused me today o£ being an
authoritarian because I quoted several modern
philosophers and scientists in my address in sup-
port of my theistic belief. I made a deep bow
before him and congratulated him upon being
so proficient in laboratory experiments in every
science and so profound in his philosophical
meditations that he could arrive at his conclu-
sions without the help of anyone else, scientist
or philosopher.

His question did set me thinking on the prob-
lem of freedom. Why do we believe what we
beheve, and why do we do what we do? If the
religion of my home had been harsh and un-
lovely I would probably be today where that
young man is, in a position of rebellion against
all religion. If I had not had the aid of this help-
ful professor and that illuminating book when
my religious convictions were undergoing ad’
justment I might not have made the necessary
adjustments but would have thrown rehgiouy
convictions into the discard.

If I were not in a position where human na*

152 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

ture reveals itself in its more lovely character-
istics would I be able to maintain confidence
in the integity of man, upon which so much of
the confidence in God depends? Has the class-
conscious worker not a right to dismiss both my
political and my religious convictions as bour-
geois prejudices? And could I not with equal
justice condemn his as myopic views which his
resentments against society explain but do not
prove true?

What we know as truth is determined by
pecuhar and individual perspectives. Pressmres
of environment, influences of heredity, and ex-
cellencies and deficiencies of teachers help to
determine our life philosophies. We ought there-
fore to hold them with decent humility and a
measure of scepticism. But if we permit our-
selves to be tempted into a complete subjec-
tivism and skepticism by these facts, we put an
end to all philosophy and ultimately to civiliza-
tion itself. For civihzation depends upon the
vigorous pursuit of the highest values by people
who are intelligent enough to know that their
values are qualified by their interests and cor-
rupted by their prejudices.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

153

19^7

Perhaps there is no better illustration of the
ethical impotence of the modern church than
its failure to deal with the evils and the ethical
problems of stock manipulation. Millions in
property values are created by pure legerde-
main. Stock dividends, watered stock and ex-
cessive rise in stock values, due to the produc-
tivity of the modern machine, are accepted by
the church without a murmur if only a slight
return is made by the beneficiaries through
church philanthropies.

Here is C recapitalizing his business and

adding six million dollars in stock. At least five
of these millions will not be invested in physi-
cal expansion but pocketed by the owner. They
simply represent capitalization of expected prof-
its. Once this added burden has been placed
upon the industry any demands of the workers
for a larger share in the profits will be met by
conclusive proof that the stock is earning only
a small dividend and that further increase in
wages would be ""suicidaF to the business.

Meanwhile C has become quite philan

thropic. He gives fifty thousand dollars here

leaves ebok the notebooe

. hmdred thousand there. Since the good
“1 is T "ChrisUan,- religious organlzatrons
oflt most by his benefactions. Every new do-
ratuTreceived widr P»ans of prarse from

°’‘^m“tSer is whether 4 e gentleman is

deceivmg . he is really quite hard-

b’^niid” harLs a secret contempt for the
boiled and throne, singing

If ^ fueli can never be sure how

Ch we mortals are fooled by our own in-

T re virtues and sanctified vices and how
adeqwte vntues m tribute

Tbeing OTvinced by it. Nor do I hnow

rlraC^rof^tbutasaJtt.

Iff m^tw mat is worse-to be taest wit
‘ rS ihile you are dishonest with the world,
Ctte aishoLst with the world heoause you
have deceived yourself?

OF A TAMED CYNIC

155

1927

Dropped in on the First Church of

on my way back from University. Went

into the young peoples meeting before the
evening service and found a typical Endeavor
meeting in progress. Some ninety wholesome
yoimgsters were in attendance. All the various
tricks of a good Endeavor meeting were used.
Several httle poems chpped from the Endeavor
World were recited at the appropriate time and
some of the members contributed quotations
from Scripture and from well-known authors.
The leader gave a good but platitudinous talk.
There was no discussion. My impression was that
this type of meeting, if still held, would be very
poorly attended. But here the facts belied my
theories. So much the worse for the young peo-
ple of the church. Only a very inert type of
youngster could be satisfied with such a meet-
ing, and only a very uncritical mind would
accept the pious platitudes which filled it, with-
out uttering a protest or challenging a dozen
assumptions.

However much such meetings may cultivate
habits of loyalty to the church among young

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

154

and a hundred thousand there. Since the good
man is a “Christian,” religious organizations
profit most by his benefactions. Every new do-
nation is received with paeans of praise from
church and press.

What I wonder is whether the gentleman is
deceiving himself and really imagines himself a
Christian or whether he is really quite hard-
boiled and harbors a secret contempt for the
little men who buzz about his throne, singing
their hallelujahs. One can never he sure how
much we mortals are fooled by our own in-
adequate virtues and sanctified vices and how
much we accept the world’s convenient tribute
without being convinced by it. Nor do I know
which interpretation of the facts is to be pre-
ferred, not as a matter of truth, but as a matter
of charity. What is worse — ^to be honest with
yourself while you are dishonest with the world,
or to be dishonest with the world because you
have deceived yourself?

OF A TAMED CYNIC

157

1927

Whenever I exchange thoughts with H , as

I do with greater frequency and with increasing
profit to myself, I have the uneasy feeling that I
belong to the forces which are destroying re-
ligion in the effort to refine it. He is as critical
as I am — ^well, perhaps not quite so critical; but
in all his critical evaluations of religious forms
he preserves a robust rehgious vitality which
I seem to lack. His scholarship is of comrse
much more extensive than mine, but it has not
robbed him of religious naivete, to use Schweit-
zer’s phrase. He has preserved a confidence in
the goodness of men and the ultimate triumph
of righteousness which I do not lack, but to
which I do not hold so unwaveringly. While we
understand each other, we really belong to dif-
ferent schools of thought.

I have been profoundly impressed by the
Spenglerian thesis that culture is destroyed by
the spirit of sophistication and I am beginning
to suspect that I belong to the forces of deca-
dence in which this sophistication is at work. I
have my eye too much upon the limitations of
contemporary religious life and institutions; I

156 LEAVES FKOM THE NOTEBOOK

people and preserve among them the traditional
religious attitudes and customs, they do noth-
ing to fit young people to live a Christian life
amid the complexities of the modern world or
to hold to the Christian faith in the perplexities
of a scientific world view. What worries me
particularly in regard to these meetings is the
assumption which underhes them that nothing
hut moral good will is necessary to solve the
problems of fife. Almost every other meeting
is a consecration meeting. No one seems to in-
troduce the young people to the idea that an
ethical life requires honest and searching intelli-
gence. Nothing is done to discover to their eyes
the tremendous chasm between the ideals of
their faith and the social realities in which they
five.

Under such circumstances we can expect no
new vitality in the Christian life as the new gen-
eration takes hold. Old virtues and respect-
abilities will be maintained, but the areas of
life which are still unchristian will remain as
they are. I see the danger in our own discussion
groups that the young people may satisfy all
their idealism in incessant talk. But the talk has
at least the merit of exploring all sides of a prob-
lem and of reveahng the hmitations of tradi-
tional attitudes and the need of new ventures in
faith.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

157

1927

Whenever I exchange thoughts with H , as

I do with greater frequency and with increasing
profit to myself, I have the uneasy feehng that I
belong to the forces which are destroying re-
ligion in the effort to refine it. He is as critical
as I am — well, perhaps not quite so critical; but
in all his critical evaluations of religious forms
he preserves a robust rehgious vitality which
I seem to lack. His scholarship is of course
much more extensive than mine, but it has not
robbed him of religious naivetd, to use Schweit-
zer’s phrase. He has preserved a confidence in
the goodness of men and the ultimate triumph
of righteousness which I do not lack, but to
which I do not hold so unwaveringly. While we
understand each other, we really belong to dif-
ferent schools of thought.

I have been profoundly impressed by the
Spenglerian thesis that culture is destroyed by
the spirit of sophistication and I am beginning
to suspect that I belong to the forces of deca-
dence in which this sophistication is at work. I
have my eye too much upon the limitations of
contemporary religious life and institutions; I

158 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

always see the absurdities and irrationalities
in which narrow types of religion issue. That
wouldn’t be so bad if I did not use the instru-
ments of intellectualism rather than those of a
higher spirituality for the critical task.

Nevertheless I hate a thoroughgoing cynic. I
don’t want anyone to be more cynical than I am.
If I am saved from cynicism at all it is by some
sense of personal loyalty to the spirit and the
genius of Jesus; that and physical health. If I
were physically anaemic I never would be able
to escape pessimism. This very type of morbid
introspection is one of the symptoms of the dis-
ease. I can’t justify myself in my perilous posi-
tion except by the observation that the busi-
ness of being sophisticated and naive, critical
and religious, at one and the same time is as
difficult as it is necessary, and only a few are able

to achieve the balance. H says I lack a

proper appreciation of the mystical values in re-
ligion. That is probably the root of the matter.
Yet I can’t resist another word in self-defense.
The modern world is so full of bunkum that it
is difficult to attempt honesty in it without an
undue emphasis upon the critical faculty.

If in this civilization we cannot enter the king-
dom of God because we cannot be as little
children, the fault, dear Brutus, is in our stars
and not in omrselves.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

159

1927

I fell in with a gentleman on the Pullman
smoker today (Pullman smokers are perfect in-
stitutes for plumbing the depths and shallows of
the American mind) who had made a kilhng
on the stock exchange. His luck appeared like
success from his perspective, and he was full of
the confidence with which success endows mor-
tals. He spoke oracularly on any and aU subjects.
He knew why the farmers were not making any
money and why the Europeans were not as
prosperous as we. Isn’t it strange how gambler’s
luck gives men the assurance of wisdom for
which philosophers search in vain? I pity this
man’s wife. But she probably regards a new fur
coat as adequate compensation for the task of
appearing convinced by his obiter dicta.

i6o

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1927

Seven clergymen sat down today with the na-
tional defense committee of the board of com-
merce. They invited us to talk over our stand
against compulsory mditary education in the
schools. It was an interesting experience, partic-
ularly as it came but shortly after our conflict
with the same group on the matter of labor
speakers in our pulpits. The contrasts in the at-
titude of the business men in these two contro-
versies is very illuminating.

In the labor controversy they were hard-boiled
realists who simply wanted to prevent labor
from getting its side before the public. At that
time they did not invite us to a round table
discussion. They had nothing to discuss. They
simply used their power in the city to prevent
any discussion of the character of their power
and the method of its preservation. In this case
they were aggrieved and bewildered romanti-
cists and ideahsts. They want mflitary training
in the schools because they have been told by
the army ojfficers that such training makes for
patriotism. And patriotism is the only religion
they know.

They invited us to a luncheon precisely be-
cause they felt themselves in a morally, not to
say spiritually, impregnable position. I think
they were quite sure that a httle argument
would convince us of the error of our ways. Our
resistance was obviously very disconcerting to
them. Perhaps they had a right to be discon-
certed; for it is only a httle while since there was
a perfect alliance between the religion of pa-
triotism and organized Clrristianity. Since most
of the men do not attend church they had not
heard of the qualms of conscience in the pulpit
that had, at least for the time being, dissolved
that alliance. We stood our ground and the
meeting dissolved without any results.

I wonder if it isn’t a little bit wicked to chal-
lenge the validity of the only kind of altruism
which men know. But no — ^narrow loyalties may
become more dangerous than selfishness.

102

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1927

I wonder why it is that so many of the churches
which go in for vaudeville programs and the
hip-hip-hooray type of religious services should
belong to the Methodist and Baptist denomina-
tions. The vulgarities of the stunt preacher are
hardly compatible with either the robust spirit-
ual vitality or the puritan traditions of the more
evangelistic churches. Perhaps the phenomenon
of which I speak is due merely to the size of
the two denominations. They may have more
showmen simply because they are big enough
to have more leaders of all varieties. Certainly
no church surpasses the Methodist in the num-
ber of men who possess real social passion and
imagination. Nor are the old emotionally warm
and naively orthodox preachers wanting in either
church.

Nevertheless there is a growing tendency to-
ward stunt services in both denominations. Per-
haps it represents the strategy of denominational
and congregational organisms which are too
much alive to accept the fate of innocuous des-
uetude, which has befallen some other churches.
Finding the masses, which they once attracted

KJJC A X^XVXJCjJL» V^XJL>iV>

by genuine religious emotion, less inclined to
seek satisfaction in religion, they maintain them-
selves by offering such goods in entertainment
and social life as the people seem to desire.

When the naive enthusiasms of those genera-
tions, among whom rehgion is an emotional ex-
perience and not a social tradition, begin to cool,
the churches which serve the new generations
must either express religious feeling through de-
votion to moral and aesthetic values or they must
substitute a baser emotionahsm for the lost re-
ligious feeling. Perhaps the prevalence of cheap
theatricality among the churches of our great
democracy is a sign of the fact that the masses
in America have lost the capacity for unreflec-
tive and exuberant religious feehng before they
could acquire the kind of region which is closely
integrated with the values of culture and art.

There is something pathetic about the effort
of the churches to capture these spiritually vacu-
ous multitudes by resort to any device which
may intrigue their vagrant fancies. But it may
not represent a total loss. The entertainment
they offer may be vulgar, but it is not vicious,
and without them the people might find satis-
faction in something even cheaper.

164

LEAVES FROM IHE NOTEBOOK

1927

At the Lenten service todav the dynamic
speaker dilated upon the heroic character of the
Christian faith. “Someone said to me recently ”
he reported, “ ‘Do you realize that it is danger-
ous to be a Christian?’ ‘Certainly/ I answered.
^It always has been and alwavs will be.’ ”

Isn’t it strange how we preachers insist on
emphasizing the heroic aspect of the Christian
faith? That pose today was exactly like the one

struck by the minister in who loved to

say dramatically, “The church needs a new
casualty list,” while it was generally known that
he carefully evaded everv issue which might
create dissension or contention.

I think we ministers strike these heroic poses
because we are dimly aware of the fact that the
gospel commits us to positions which require
heroic devotion before they will ever be realized
in life. But we are astute rather than heroic and
cautious rather than courageous. Thus we are in
the dangerous position of being committed to
the cross in principle but escaping it in practice.
We are honest enough to be uneasy about that

OF A TAMED CYNIC 165

fact, but insincere enough to quiet our uneasi-
ness by heroic poses.

Let any group of ministers gather and you
will find someone declaring fervently, “No one
ever tells me what to say. My congregation gives
me perfect liberty.” That is just another way of
quieting an uneasy conscience; for we all know
that if we explore the full meaning of a gospel
of love its principles will be found to run coimter
to cherished prejudices. It is of course not im-
possible to retain freedom of the pulpit, but if
anyone is doing so without the peril of defections
from his ranks and opposition to his message, he
is deceiving himself about the quahty of his
message. Either his message is too innocuous to
deserve opposition or too conventional to arouse
it.

An astute pedagogy and a desire to speak the
truth in love may greatly decrease opposition to
a minister’s message and persuade a diflficult
minority to entertain at least, and perhaps to
profit by, his message; but if a gospel is preached
without opposition it is simply not the gospel
which resulted in the cross. It is not, in short,
the gospel of love.

i66

leaves

FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1927

Talked today at die open forum wkicli meets
every Sunday afternoon in the high school. Th
Wic fringe” of the city congregates there, in
addition to iany sensible people. The question
period in such meetings is unfortmately mo-
Lnohzed to a great extent by the foohsh ones,
Zugh not always. Today one f ™
wanted to know when I ihought the Lord wo^d
Tome again, while a young feUow spoke volub y
on communism and ended by challenging me to
X that aU religion is fantasy. Between those
two you have the story of the tragic state of re^
S in modem life. One half of the worM
sims to beheve that every poetic syrnbol mth

^hich religion must deal is an "

of a concrete or an historical fact; the other halt
having learned that this is not the case can
to no o4et conclusion but that aU rehgion

is based upon fantasy.

Fundamentahsts have at least one ‘^^arac er-
istic in common with most scientMs. Neither
can understand that poetic and religious imagi-
nation has a way of arriving at tmth by giving a
clue to the total meaning of things without be-

OF A TAMED CYNIC

167

ing in any sense an analytic description of de-
tailed facts. The fundamentalists insist that re-
ligion is science, and thus they prompt those
who know that this is not true to declare that
all religious truth is contrary to scientific fact.

How can an age which is so devoid of poetic
imagination as ours be truly religious?

i68

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1927

Our city race commission has finally made its
report after months of investigation and further
months of dehberation on our findings. It has
been a rare experience to meet with these white
and colored leaders and talk over our race prob-
lems. The situation which the colored people of
the city face is really a desperate one, and no
one who does not spend real time in gathering
the facts can have any idea of the misery and
pain which exists among these people, recently
migrated from the south and unadjusted to our
industrial civilization. Hampered both by their
own inadequacies and the hostihty of a white
world they have a desperate fight to keep body
and soul together, to say nothing of developing
those amenities which raise life above the brute
level.

I wish that some of our romanticists and sen-
timentalists could sit through a series of meet-
ings where the real social problems of a city are
discussed. They would be cured of their opti-
mism. A city which is built around a productive
process and which gives only casual thought
and incidental attention to its human problems

OF A TAMED CYNIC

169

is really a kind of hell. Thousands in this town
are really living in torment while the rest of us
eat, drink and make merry. What a civilization!

Incidentally I wish the good church people
who hate our mayor so much because he doesn’t
conform to their rules and standards could ap-
preciate how superior his attitudes and view-
points on race relations are to those held by
most church people. It seems to me rather un-
fortunate that we must depend upon the "publi-
cans” for our social conscience to so great a de-
gree while the ""saints” develop their private
virtues and let the city as such fry in its iniq-
uities.

170

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1927

I think I have solved the Sunday night service
problem for good. I give a short address or ser-
mon upon a more or less controversial moral
issue, or upon a perplexing religious question,
and after closing the service we have a half-hour
to forty-five minutes of discussion. The group
attracted by this kind of program is not large. It
is not the usual forum crowd. But it is a group
of unusually thoughtful people, and the way
they explore the fundamental themes and prob-
lems of life is worth more than many sermons.

I am absolutely convinced that such discus-
sions come to grips with life’s real problems
much more thoroughly than any ex cathedra
utterance from the pulpit. For one thing the
people themselves make the application of gen-
eral principles to specific experiences. Then, too,
they inevitably explore the qualifications which
life seems to , make upon every seemiugly abso-
lute principle. The real principles of Christian
living seem so much more real and also so much
more practicable when a group of thoughtful

OF A TAMED CYNIC I7I

people make an honest eflEort to fit them into the
complexities of modem life.

Perhaps the most interesting point about such
a discussion is the way every type of experience
can be used to illustrate a certain general truth.
Last Sunday night an advertising man made a
most interesting contribution to the question of
marriage and divorce out of his experience as
advertising counsel. He said that he had leamt
in business that it is always well to regard rela-
tionships as permanent even when they are not
so absolutely in a legal sense. If the parties to
a contract assume that it can be broken easily
they will not extend themselves as they ought
to make those adjustments which a permanent
relationship requires. — ^Thus we make the ex-
perience gamed in one field of activity serve the
problem of another field. Again and again
thoughtful mothers have thrown light upon the
problems of democracy, the place of coercion
in life and the eflScacy of trust out of experience
gained in their work with their children.

If there were only more thoughtful people it
would be worth while to change every service
into something like this evening discussion. But
discussion requires time and it doesn’t mean
much to people who are looking for “inspira-
tion” rather than guidance. I suppose there is

172 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

still a place for inspirational addresses. But in a
world in which so many traditional moral ideas
are in solution and so many others are generally
accepted and never applied, this kind of honest
searching with others, rather than for them, is
particularly rewarding.

I wonder if it is really possible to have an honest
Thanksgiving celebration in an industrial civi-
lization. Harvest festivals were natural enough
in peasant communities. The agrarian feels him-
self dependent upon nature’s beneficence and
anxious about nature’s caprices. When the au-
tumnal harvest is finally safe in the barns there
arise, with the sigh of rehef, natural emotions
of gratitude that must express themselves reli-
giously, since the bounty is actually created by
the mysterious forces of natmre which man may
guide but never quite control.

All that is different in an industrial civihza-
tion in which so much wealth is piled up by the
ingenuity of the machine, and, at least seem-
ingly, by the diligence of man. Thanksgiving
becomes increasingly the business of congratu-
lating the Almighty upon his most excellent co-
workers, ourselves. I have had that feeling about
the Thanksgiving proclamations of our Presi-
dents for some years. An individual, living in an
industrial community might still celebrate a
Thanksgiving day uncorrupted by pride, be-
cause he does benefit from processes and forces

174

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

which: he does not create or even guide. But a
national Thanksgiving, particularly if it is meant
to express gratitude for material bounty, be-
comes increasingly a pharisaic rite.

The tmion Thanksgiving service we attended
this morning was full of the kind of self-right-
eous bunk which made it quite impossible for
me to worship. There was indeed a faint odor of
contrition in one of the prayers and in an aside
of the sermon, but it did not spring from the
heart. The Lord who was worshipped was not
the Lord of Hosts, but the spirit of Uncle Sam,
given a cosmic eminence for the moment which
the dear old gentleman does not deserve.

It is a bad thing when religion is used as a
vehicle of pride. It would be better to strut un-
ashamedly down the boardwalk of nations than
to go through the business of bowing humbly
before God while we say, “We thank thee Lord
that we are not as other men.”

OF A TAMED CYNIC

175

1927

Mother and I visited at the home o£ today

where the husband is sick and was out of em-
ployment before he became sick. The folks have
few connections in the city. They belong to no
church. What a miserable existence it is to be
friendless in a large city. And to be dependent
upon a heartless industry. The man is about 55
or 57 I should judge, and he is going to have a
desperate time securing employment after he
gets well. These modern factories are not meant
for old men. They want young men and they
use them up pretty quickly. Your modern
worker, with no skill but what is in the machine,
is a sorry individual. After he loses the stamina
of youth, he has nothing to sell.

I promised 1 would try to find him a job.

I did it to relieve the despair of that family, but
I will have a hard time making good on my
promise. According to the ethics of our modem
industrialism men over fifty, without special
training, are so much junk. It is a pleasure to see
how such an ethic is qualified as soon as the
industrial unit is smaller and the owner has a
personal interest in his men. I could mention

176 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

quite a few such instances. But unfortunately
the units are getting larger and larger and more
inhuman.

I think I had better get in contact with more
of these victims of our modem industrialism
and not leave that end of oirr work to mother
alone. A little such personal experience will
help much to save you from sentimentahty.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

177

1927

Have just returned from the student conference
at . A smart young professor told the stu-

dents that all social customs are based upon
irrational taboos. Our generation is the first with
the opportunity to build a rational social order.
The way to build a rational society, according
to this savant, is to regard every relationship,
custom, convention and law as irrational until it
has proved itself rational by experience.

A sample of the kind of society he would
build by his reason was given in his discussion
of sex relations. He thinks the highest kind of
family life would result from the love of one
woman for one man while both indulged in
promiscuous relations. Thus would the values
of both freedom and love be maintained. The
smart young man seems never to have heard
that you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

If you want love and cooperation in any kind
of society, and most of all in the family, it is
necessary to sacrifice some freedom for its sake.
What strange fanatics these moderns are I Im-
agining themselves dispassionate in their evalu-
ation of all values, they are really bigoted pro-

178 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

tagonists of the one value of freedom. Every
other value must he subordinated to it.

It is true that every convention, custom, law
and usage contains an irrational element. Some
were unreasonable from the beginning and
others have become so by shifting circumstance.
It is necessary, therefore, that we approach the
facts of life experimentally and scientifically,
rather than traditionally. However, it seems to
me quite unreasonable to proceed upon the as-
sumption that all traditions are wholly unrea-
sonable. Most of the moderns who think so are
significantly defective in the knowledge of his-
tory.

There is at the heart of almost every tradition
an element of reasonableness and around its cir-
cumference a whole series of irrationahties. Omr
business must be to destroy the latter and re-
store the former by fitting it to contemporane-
ous circumstances and conditions.

I doubt whether it is wise for every person to
be extremely critical of aU traditions in every
field of thought and life. I imagine we ought to
specialize a little in this matter and let various
people experiment in various areas. This seems
to me a wise policy for the simple reason that
it does not make for happiness for one person to
do the experimenting in every field. At any rate
most of the intellectuals I know who try to do

OF A TAMED CYNIC

179

it are miserable souls. I am always glad to es-
cape their company and consort with folks who
take some things for granted. There is an un-
natural strain in their lives and, having made a
virtue of the critical temper, they usually dis-
count virtue and achievement even where it is
indubitable.

Since there are many more traditionahsts
than experimentalists, all this may be bad ad-
vice. But I doubt whether the lethargy of the
many justifies the few in spoiling their tempers
and their judgment. Let every reformer find at
least one field of interest and life where he can
be happily conventional. If he is trying to re-
make the economic order, let him accept family
life and be happy in it without too many scru-
ples about its alleged imperfections. On second
thought I don’t like this advice. At any rate it is
inconsistent with my scorn for the hberal the-
ologians who are so preoccupied with the task
of reforming religion that they have no interest
in the iniquities of society which ought to chal-
lenge their conscience.

Let us have reformers, then, who try to re-
form everything at the same time! But I am go^
ing to keep my distance from them.

i8o

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1927

The new Ford car is out. The town is full of talk
about it. Newspaper reports reveal that it is the
topic of the day in all world centers. Crowds
storm every exhibit to get the first glimpse of
this new creation. Mr. Ford has given out an
interview saying that the car has cost him about
a hundred million dollars and that after finish-
ing it he still has about a quarter of a billion
dollars in the bank.

I have been doing a httle arithmetic and have
come to the conclusion that the car cost Ford
workers at least fifty million in lost wages dur-
ing the past year. No one knows how many hun-
dreds lost their homes in the period of unem-
ployment, and how many children were taken
out of school to help fill the depleted family ex-
chequer, and how many more children lived on
short rations during this period. Mr. Ford refuses
to concede that he made a mistake in bringing
the car out so late. He has a way of impressing
the public even with his mistakes. We are now
asked to believe that the whole idea of waiting
a year after the old car stopped selling before
bringing out a new one was a great advertising

OF A TAMED CYNIC

l8l

scheme which reveals the perspicacity of this
industrial genius. But no one asks about the
toll in human hves.

What a civilization this is! Naive gentlemen
with a genius for mechanics suddenly become
the arbiters over the lives and fortunes of hun-
dreds of thousands. Their moral pretensions are
credulously accepted at full value. No one both-
ers to ask whether an industry which can main-
tain a cash reserve of a quarter of a billion
ought not make some provision for its unem-
ployed. It is enough that the new car is a good
one. Here is a work of art in the only realm of
art which we can understand. We will therefore
refrain from making imdue ethical demands
upon the artist. Artists of all the ages have been
notoriously unamenable to moral discipline.
The cry of the hungry is drowned in the song,
“Henry has made a lady out of Lizzy.”

i 82

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1927

This prayer book controversy in the Church of
England ought to give us liberals who make so
much of tolerance a pause. What are the limits
of tolerance? Does not tolerance of a theological
position which one knows or believes to be un-
true become a betrayal of the truth? How can
one be tolerant of medievahsm without playing
traitor to the best in the modern day?

Here is the Episcopal church which many of
us have counted blessed because it was the one
bridge over the chasm which separates Cathol-
icism and Protestantism. But the chasm is now
revealed as too wide for any bridge. Cooperation
with the Cathohc demands cormivance with re-
hgious practices which reduce rehgion to magic.
No wonder the Protestant laymen in Parhament
threw the revised prayer book out. How can
anyone in the year of our Lord 1927 be seriously
exercised over the problem of the “real pres-
ence” in the Eucharist? Think of the spiritual
leaders of a tom and bleeding world debating
learnedly on whether and how God can be
magically locahzed and salvation be confined
in a capsule. To read the arguments of the

Ur A UilNlU

X03

sacerdotalists is enough to drive one into the
arms of the unrepentant rationahsts who regard
all religion as dangerous.

The weaknesses of Catholicism ought not
prompt one to disregard all the finer spiritual
and moral values which still hve in this ancient
church. But there can be no final unity between
an institution which reduces rehgion to magic
and a fellowship of the spirit which tries to sub-
due the chaos of life under the ideal of faith.

Magic is an enemy of aU morality. It offers a
short cut to all prizes of the spirit which can be
won only by heroic effort.

184

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1927

After speaking at University today Pro-
fessor said he objected to my assumption

that the family is the root of human societies.
He said he believed that most forms of human
cooperation were formed by men who had to re-
sist the special interests of the family, as typified
particularly by the narrow loyalty of the mother
to her own offspring, before they could establish
wider fellowships. That was a new idea to me
and one that seems to be not without merit. Of
course it does not invalidate the thesis that the
family is the first unit of society; for the first
fighting unit was probably composed of a group
of fathers and sons and sons’ sons. That is, not
the family in the narrowest but in the widest
sense, the family as it develops into the clan is
the first real society.

The idea that the family is frequently op-
posed to ventures in wider fellowship is justified
by more than one present fact. The family is stiff
essentially selfish, and many a man is beguiled
from ideal ventures by a false sense of obhgation
to his family. Think of the number of men who
sell their souls merely that their wives and chil-

OF A TAMED CYNIC

185

dren may enjoy higher standards of living than
other families. Think of the number of mothers
whose interest in life never goes beyond the am-
bition to secure special advantages for their
children. The mother of the sons of Zebedee is
a good example. In her you have motherhood in
its tragic limitations as well as in its sublime
beauty.

The family is not inevitably selfish or invari-
ably opposed to larger ventures in fellowship,
but it may easily become so. Jesus’ ruthless
words, “He who loveth father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me, he who loveth son
and daughter more than me is not worthy of
me,” have more meaning than most Christians
have realized. Celibacy may be wrong because
it escapes rather than solves this problem. But
the invariable tendency of religious movements
of great moral sensitiveness to experiment with
celibacy is significant. Thus speaks a bachelor.
Let the cynic make the most of the private prej-
udice which colors this judgment.

i86

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928

This conference on religious education seems
to your humble servant the last word in absurd-
ity. We are told by a dehghtful “expert” that
we ought not really teach our children about
God lest we rob them of the opportrmity of
making their own discovery of God, and lest we
corrupt their yormg minds by our own supersti-
tions. If we contiaue along these lines the day
will come when some expert will advise us not
to teach our children the EngUsh language,
since we rob them thereby of the possibility of
choosing the German, French or Japanese lan-
guages as possible alternatives. Don’t these
good people realize that they are reducing the
principle of freedom to an absurdity?

Rehgion, like language, is a social product.
The potentialities for both are in the child, but
their highest articulations are the result of ages
of cultural and spiritual experience, and in the
right kind of rehgious education the experience
of the race is joined with the inclinations of the
individual. We do not get a higher type of re-
ligious idealism from children merely by with-

OF A TAMED CYNIC

187

holding our own religious ideas from them
(however they may be filled with error), any
more than we would get a higher type of civihza-
tion by letting some group of youngsters shift
for themselves upon a desert island.

A wise architect observed that you could
break the laws of architectmral art provided you
had mastered them first. That would apply to
rehgion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past
does not guarantee freedom from its imperfec-
tions. More probably it assures the repetition of
past errors. We ought of course to cultivate a
wholesome scepticism in our yoimg people so
that they will not accept the ideas of the past
too slavishly. But appreciation must come be-
fore criticism.

We do not teach a child the limitations of
Beethoven before we have helped it to appre-
ciate him; nor do we withhold any appreciation
of the classics in order that the child might be
free to prefer Stravinsky to Beethoven. What
some of these moderns are doing is simply to
destroy the organs of religious insight and the
atmosphere in which religious attitudes may
flourish, ostensibly for the sake of freedom, but
really at its expense.

I have a dark suspicion that some of these
modern religious educators do not really know

i

i86

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928

This conference on religious education seems
to your humble servant the last word in absurd-
ity. We are told by a delightful “expert” that
we ought not really teach our children about
God lest we rob them of the opportunity of
making their own discovery of God, and lest we
corrupt their young minds by our own supersti-
tions. If we continue along these lines the day
will come when some expert will advise us not
to teach our children the English language,
since we rob them thereby of the possibility of
choosing the German, French or Japanese lan-
guages as possible alternatives. Don’t these
good people realize that they are reducing the
principle of freedom to an absurdity?

Rehgion, like language, is a social product.
The potentialities for both are in the child, but
their highest articulations are the result of ages
of cultural and spiritual experience, and in the
right kind of religious education the experience
of the race is joined with the inclinations of the
individual. We do not get a higher type of re-
hgious idealism from children merely by with-

holding our own religious ideas from them
(however they may be filled with error), any
more than we would get a higher type of civiliza-
tion by letting some group of youngsters shift
for themselves upon a desert island.

A wise architect observed that you could
break the laws of architectural art provided you
had mastered them first. That would apply to
religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past
does not guarantee freedom from its imperfec-
tions. More probably it assures the repetition of
past errors. We ought of course to cultivate a
wholesome scepticism in our young people so
that they will not accept the ideas of the past
too slavishly. But appreciation must come be-
fore criticism.

We do not teach a child the limitations of
Beethoven before we have helped it to appre-
ciate him; nor do we withhold any appreciation
of the classics in order that the child might be
free to prefer Stravinsky to Beethoven. What
some of these moderns are doing is simply to
destroy the organs of religious insight and the
atmosphere in which religious attitudes may
flourish, ostensibly for the sake of freedom, but
really at its expense.

I have a dark suspicion that some of these
modern religious educators do not really know

i88

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

what religion is about. They want a completely
rational faith and do not reahze that they are
killing religion by a complete rationahzation.
With aU their pious phraseology and supposedly
modem pedagogy they really are decadent
forces.

Life is a battle between faith and reason in
which each feeds upon the other, drawing suste-
nance from it and destroying it. Nature has
wisely ordained that faith shall have an early
advantage in the hfe of the child to compensate
for its later difficulties. If we imagine that we
help the progress of the race by inoculating
children with a premature sophistication we are
of aU men most miserable. Reason, without the
balance of faith, destroys a civilization soon
enough, without giving it this advantage among
the young. I wonder if any of these modem re-
hgious pedagogues have ever read Unamuno’s
The Tragic Sense of Life?

Here I am talking like a fundamentalist. But
why not? If we must choose between types of
fanaticism is there any particular reason why we
should prefer the fanatics who destroy a vital
culture in the name of freedom and reason to
those who try to strangle a new culture at birth
in the name of authority and dogma? The latter
type of fanaticism is bound to end in futility.

The growth of reason cannot he stopped by
dogma. But the former type is dangerous be-
cause it easily enervates a rational culture witi
ennui and despair.

igo

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928

This Federal Council meeting is an interest-
ing study in the geography of morals. The race
commission presented a report today in which it
tried to place the council on record as favoring
the enforcement of the fifteenth amendment as
well as the eighteenth. It was obviously an effort
to exploit the strong prohibition sentiment of
the churches for the sake of committing them to
the espousal of the interests of the disfranchised
Negroes in the south. That is not a bad political
strategy. But it did not quite work.

A good brother from the southern Presby-
terian church warned that to interfere with this
“political issue” would “soil the garments of the
bride of Christ.” To him the eighteenth amend-
ment represented a “moral” issue but the fif-
teenth was a “political” one. I have a sneaking
suspicion that the fifteenth amendment ex-
presses more of the genius of the gospel than
the eighteenth, but that is neither here nor
there. What was interesting was the way in
which various church leaders tried to rescue us
from the embarrassment into which the council
was brought by this proposal.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

191

A good brother who was raised in the south
and now lives in the north tried to act as media-
tor. He iutroduced his remarks with the usual
nice story about how much he loved his Negro
mammy. Some day he ought to have a lesson in
ethics and learn how much easier it is to love
those who acknowledge their inferiority than
those who challenge our superiority. It is indeed
a virtuous woman who can love her social com-
petitor as sincerely as she loves her faithful
maid.

Another mediator was a southern bishop who
has many northern connections. He made much
of the fact that the south disregards only the
spirit and not the letter of the enfranchising
amendments to the constitution. The bishop is
really a man of some courage who has spoken
out bravely on the industrial conditions in the
south. But he was evidently afraid in this in-
stance either to accept or to reject a Christian
view of race relations. So he stuck to casuistry
about the letter of the law. He has probably
preached many a sermon on the text about the
letter killing and the spirit making alive. At any
rate everyone who spoke revealed how geo-
graphic and historical circumstance had quali-
fied Christian conviction.

That was as true of those of us who took an
uncompromising position as the southern equiv-

igz LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

ocators and the semi-southem mediators. To
the southerners we are not Christian idealists
but merely “Yarrkee” meddlers. And perhaps we
are. At any rate it was easy to see from the de-
bate that the north cannot help the south much
in solving its race problem. If it is solved the
solution must come out of the conscience and
heart of the south.

After all, the problem, as every moral prob-
lem, is not merely conditioned by geography
but by mathematics. Contact between races
when the one race is almost as numerous as the
other is quite a difiFerent story from a relation-
ship in which the subject race is numerically
very much weaker than the dominant group.
Therefore let us not judge, lest we be judged.
It is so easy to repent of other people’s sins.

Nevertheless it does not make one feel very
comfortable to have a great church body seek
some pohtic solution for a problem in which the
ideal of Christian brotherhood leaves httle room
for equivocation.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

193

1928

There is a discouraging pettiness about human
nature which makes me hate myself each time
I make an analysis of my inner motives and
springs of action. Here I am prodding and crit-
icizing people continually because they have
made too many compromises with the necessi-
ties of life and adjusted the Christian ideal until
it has completely lost its original meaning. Yet
I make my own compromises all the time.

It is Christian to trust people, and my trust
is carefully qualified by mistrust and caution.

It is Christian to love, and to trust in the po-
tency of love rather than in physical coercion.
Logically that means non-resistance. Yet I be-
lieve that a minimum of coercion is necessary in
all social tasks, or in most of them.

It is Christian to forgive rather than to pun-
ish; yet I do little by way of experimenting in
the redemptive power of forgiveness.

I am not really a Christian. In me, as in many
others, “the native hue of resolution is sicklied
o’er by a pale cast of thought.” I am too cautioms
to be a Christian. I can justify my caution, but

194 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

SO can the other fellow who is more cautious
than I am.

The whole Christian adventure is frustrated
continually not so much by mahce as by cow-
ardice and reasonableness. Of course everyone
must decide for himself just where he is going to
put his peg; where he is going to arrive at some
stable equihbrium between moral adventure and
necessary caution. And perhaps everyone is jus-
tified if he tries to prove that there is a particular
reasonableness about the type of compromise
which he has reached. But he might well learn,
better than I have learned, to be charitable with
those who have made their adjustments to the
right and to the left of his position. If I do not
watch myself I will regard all who make their
adjustments to my ri^t as fanatics and all who
make them to the left as cowards. There is a
siUy egotism about such an attitude. But it is
difficult to be pedagogicaUy eflEective if you do
not hold pretty resolutely to some position.

A reasonable person adjusts his moral goal
somewhere between Christ and Aristotle, be-
tween an ethic of love and an ethic of modera-
tion. I hope there is more of Christ than of Aris-
totle in my position. But I would not be too
smre of it.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

195

1928

Jack Hyde came up today for a chat. These
newspaper men are always interesting company.

As rehgious editor of the Daily , he has

been following the preachers of the town pretty
closely. Of course he is a cynic, though a gentle
one. He tells many an interesting story on how
the preachers try to get free pubHcity.

I think there ought to be a club in which
preachers and journalists could come together
and have the sentimentalism of the one matched
with the cynicism of the other. That ought to
bring them pretty close to the truth. The inter-
esting part of the contrast is that the newspaper
is officially as optimistic about contemporary
life as the pulpit. The dffierence between the
two is that the preacher is ensnared by his own
sentimentality and optimism while the newspa-
per man has two views, one for official and one
for private consumption.

106

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928

Mjy good friend has sent me his church

calendar. Among other things he reports “Last
Sunday almost as many strangers as members
were present. The weather was a bit cold. Was
your loyalty chilly too? You cannot fight battles
with half the soldiers in their tents. Lent is here.
Give your church the right of way. Do your
duty next Sunday.”

Here we see how easily even the Protestant
minister gravitates to the viewpoint of the
priest. He thinks people ought to regard it as
a duty to hear him preach. What is still worse
is that he identifies church attendance with mor-
al heroism. Does he not reahze that faithful
church attendance develops and reveals the vir-
tue of patience much more than the virtue of
courage?

I must admit that I have urged people to
come to church myself as a matter of duty. But
I can do so no longer. The church service is not
an end in itself. Not even religion is an end in
itself. If the church service does not attract peo-
ple by the comfort and challenge it brings to
them, we only postpone the evil day if we com-

OF A TAMED CYNIC

197

pel attendance by appealing to their sense of
duty. It may not be wrong to appeal to their
sense of loyalty to the institution and tell them
that if they have identified themselves with the
institution as members they owe it to the stran-
gers to be there. But even that is dangerous. The
church is aheady too much an end in itself.

These appeals make it appear that we regard
rehgious devotion as a service to God, a very
dangerous idea. Of course a modem preacher
doesn’t really befieve that. What is really in his
mind, consciously or unconsciously, is that the
people owe him the duty to hear him preach.
That is perhaps a natural glorification of his
own function but it cannot be denied that there
is something pathetic about it.

I can see, of course, that all good things de-
pend in part upon right habits. Customs, atti-
tudes and actions which are desirable cannot
always depend upon impulse and will. It may
be a good thing that people attend church as
a matter of habit and because of a general sense
of obligation to the institution. If churches de-
pended only upon people who must make up
their minds each Sunday whether or no they
will attend church, our attendance would be
even smaller than it is.

Yet habitual actions easily become meaning-
less, and institutions which depend upon them

198 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

lose their vitality. If habitual actions are not
continually revitahzed by the compulsion of
ideals and the attraction of the values involved
in them, they may easily become useless.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

199

1928

Detroit observed Good Friday today as never
before. Sixteen theatres and many churches be-
sides were filled to capacity during the three-
hour period. I wonder how one is to understand
this tremendous devotion of this pagan city.
How httle place the real spirit of Christ has in
the industrial drive of this city. And yet men
and women flock by the thousands to meditate
upon the cross. Perhaps we are all hke the cen-
turian who helped to crucify Jesus and then was
so impressed by the whole drama of the cross
that the confession was forced from his lips
“Smely this was the son of God.”

Before going to the theatre service I passed a
Methodist church with a message on its bulletin
board that explains many chapters in American
church history. It was: “Good Friday service
this afternoon. Snappy song service.” So we
combine the somber notes of rehgion with the
jazz of the age.

I wonder if anyone who needs a snappy song
service can really appreciate the meaning of the
cross. But perhaps that is just a Lutheran preju-
dice of mine.

200

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928

A very sophisticated young man assured me in
our discussion today (student discussion at a
middle western university) that no intelligent
person would enter the ministry today. He was
sure that the ministry was impossible as a voca-
tion not only because too many irrationalities
were stiU enmeshed with religion but also be-
cause there was no real opportimity for useful-
ness in the church. I tried to enhghten this soph-
omoric wise man.

Granted all the weaknesses of the church and
the limitations of the ministry as a profession,
where can one invest one’s life where it can be
made more effective in as many directions?

You can deal with children and young people
and help them to set tlieir life goals and organ-
ize their personalities around just and reason-
able values.

You can help the imperiled family shape the
standards and the values by which the institu-
tion of family life may be saved and adjusted
to the new conditions of an industrial civiliza-
tion.

You can awaken a complacent civihzation to

OF A TAMED CYNIC

201

the injustices which modem industrialism is de-
veloping. While ministers fail most at this point
there is nothing to prevent a courageous man
from making a real contribution to his society
in this field.

You can soften the asperities of racial conflict
and aid the various groups of a polyglot city to
understand one another and themselves.

You can direct the thoughts and the hopes of
men to those facts and those truths which miti-
gate the cruelty of the natural world and give
men the opportunity to assert the dignity of hu-
man life in the face of the contempt of nature.

You can help them to shape and to direct
their hopes and aspirations until their fives are
determined and molded by the ideal objects of
their devotion. While it is true that magic and
superstition are still entwined, seemingly inex-
tricably intertwined, with the highest hopes
and assurances of mankind, you may find real
joy as a skillful craftsman in separating hopes
from illusions so that the one need not perish
with the other.

Here is a task which requires the knowledge
of a social scientist and the insight and imagina-
tion of a poet, the executive talents of a business
man and the mental discipline of a philosopher.
Of course none of us meets all the demands
made upon us. It is not easy to be all things to

202

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEI lOK

all men. Perhaps that is why people are so rit-
ical of us. Our task is not specific enoug to
make a high degree of skill possible or to ri ;ult
in tangible and easily measured results. Pe pie
can find fault with us easily enough and we ] ive
no statistics to overawe them and to ne ate
their criticisms.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

203

1928

I Spoke today at the “Victory dinner” of one of
our civic organizations which had been con-
ducting a financial campaign in the interest of
its worthy objects. Not being well prepared I
animadverted disconnectedly upon the lack of
culture in Detroit and expressed the hope that
the dawn of a new day was breaking.

Mr. who sat close to me was so angry

about what I said that he confessed that he had
been tempted to interrupt me in the middle of
my address. He cited a large benefaction of his
in the interest of a religious organization as
proof of Detroit’s culture and insisted that the
“old families,” to which he belonged, had real
culture, whatever might be said about the new-
er crowd. I told him his contribution was in the
interest of righteousness rather than culture.
Inasmuch as it is generally known that he made
a fortune by rigging the stock market, he was
a Httle nonplussed by my answer. We finally
came to an amicable agreement upon the prop-
osition that the streets of Detroit are cleaner
than those of Chicago.

LEAVES FKOM THE NOTEBOC !

204

1928

I believe every preacher ought to take sever L
radical journals, preferably the ones which a; j
extremely inimical to religion. The ethical idea :
of Christianity are so high and the compromise ;
which the average church and the average mi: •
ister has made between these ideals and tl 5
economic necessities of society are so great, ar I
self-deception is so easy, that we need the co ■
rective of a critical and perhaps cynical evalu •
tion of religion in modern life.

I should like to recommend this kind of rea( •
ing particularly to successful ministers who a: >
so easily obsessed by a messianic complex b -
cause of the compliments they receive. L :
them remind themselves that there are astu 5
observers who think that all their preaching ;
superficial and never touches the fundament I
defects of modem society, and that these criti ;
are at least as near the truth as their too ge -
erous devotees.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

205

1928

I think I ought to repent of the many unkind
things I have said about various ministers. We
hberal preachers ( I am thinking of social liber-
alism now) are too ready to attribute conven-
tional opinions to cowardice. What we don’t
reahze is that the great majority of parsons sim-
ply don’t share our radical convictions. If they
get along very handsomely in the kind of a civ-
ilization in which we live, that is simply because
they are in sincere general agreement with the
prevailing ideas of our day. Of course I think
we have a right to wonder a httle how one can
claim discipleship to one who disturbed history
so much and yet be such a thorough conformist.
Yet it is usually not cowardice but mental iner-
tia which creates the conformity; and some-
times the conformity is the honest fruit of a finely
poised rather than a daring mind. After all most
of us are conformists in some sense, and it is
rather presumptuous on our part to condemn
every type of conformity except our own.

I am moved to this reflection by the insist-
ence of such men as the editor of the Christian
Register that every liberal who remains in an

2o6 leaves from the NOTEBC )K

evangelical communion and does not imm« li-
ately join the Unitarian church must be pron )t-
ed by cowardice. When it is theological rat er
than social hberalism that is made the test of
conformity or radicahsm, it is my ox tha is
gored, and I begin to recant my previous ha sh
opinions. If the editor of the Register can gc so
far wrong in gauging the motives of evangel ;al
hberals we social radicals may be wrong in x-
plaining why parsons fail to be thoroughgo ig
pacifists. Great achievement! I learn how to De
tolerant when I become the victim of somebc ly
else’s spiritual pride.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

207

1928

Had a profitable talk with a Jewish friend in
the east. He said the only Christian church that
he could ever join would be that of the Quakers.
Of course he would not join the Quakers in the
kind of a world in which we are living, where
Christians practice social ostracism against Jews
and thereby force every Jew to regard such a
transfer of religious loyalty in the fight of trea-
son to his racial community. He felt that if he
were free to choose his religious group he would
choose the Quakers because they have no pro-
fessional ministry. He dabbles in psychiatry and
thinks he has looked through the professional
minister.

I would like to have him talk to a group of
preachers sometime. Like all realists he barely
escapes the kind of cynicism which destroys
wholesome human relations. But he does escape
it and is not at all bitter in his analysis of hu-
man nature. That is why his reaction to the
ministry disquiets me. He has his hands on con-
siderable truth.

There is something very artificial about the
professional ministry. When religion deals with

2o8

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

magic the professional priests can dispense the
magic and be quite happy. But when religion
becomes a search for all of life’s highest values
there is something incongruous about making
your hving in the business of helping people to
discover and develop these values. I don’t think
this consideration invalidates the ministry as a
profession. In a day of specialists and experts
there ought to be room for a specialist in moral
and spiritual values. But think of commanding
a large salary because you are a better preacher
than someone else! Isn’t that putting a market
value on the abihty of a man to help people find
God? Fortunately it is the rhetorical rather than
the spiritual gift that usually creates the differ-
ent prices in the preacher market.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

209

1928

Passing one of our big churches today I ran
across this significant slogan, calculated to im-
press the passing wayfarer: “We Will Go Out
of Business. When? When Every Man in De-
troit Has Been Won to Christ.” Of course it is
just a slogan and not to be taken too seriously,
but the whole weakness of Protestantism is in
it. Here we are hving in a complex world in
which thousands who have been “won to
Christ” haven’t the shghtest notion how to live
a happy life or how to live together with other
people without making each other miserable.

Yet the church goes about the business of
winning people to Christ — that is, pulling
them through some kind of emotional or social
experience in which they are made to commit
themselves, or in which they really do commit
themselves, to the good life as it is symbolized
in Christ, and imagining that this is the end of
the task. I do not say that such commitments do
not have their value. But surely one must be
very bhnd to hve under the illusion that the de-
sire or even the will to hve a Christ-hfe is auto-

210 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

matically fulfilled in present-day society or in
any society.

The church which conceived that slogan is
really better than the silly advertisement might
lead one to suppose. I think people receive some
fight and lea^g there. Nevertheless, most of
its energies go into the business of “winning
others.”

The saddest part about these highly evange-
listic churches who put everything into the re-
cruiting task is that they generally tempt those
who are already “won” to imagine themselves
perfect, or at least “saved.” I know one lawyer
in that church, and not a bad man either, who
needs to be “won” to several ideas in the gospel
of Christ about which he hasn’t the faintest
glimmer of fight. But he is too sure of himself
to get a new idea.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

Zll

1928

Here is a minister making a confession in his
weekly paper: "'Last Sunday night,” he writes,
"I was at my worst and unfortunately there
were many strangers in the audience. I tried,
but I could not get the ball over the plate. I
had taught a Sunday-school class, preached
over the radio, gone out to dinner, entertained

a guest at supper, met the committee and

failed to get rest after Easter. I will try to do
better next Sunday, so come then.”

It is all very nice and humble, but there is an
implication of professionalism in the whole
thing that is appalling. The idea is that he didn t
put on a good performance, "didn't get the ball
over the plate.” There you have the whole weak-
ness of a professional ministry, striving each
Sunday to make an interesting speech. It simply
cant be denied that the business of furnishing
inspiration twice each week, on a regular sched-
ule, by a person who is paid to do just that and
whose success is judged by the amount of
"pep” he can concentrate in his homilies, is full
of moral and spiritual dangers. To follow such a
program without running into spiritual bank-
ruptcy requires the resources of a saint.

212

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928

Arriving at today, I was put up at the

luxurious home of a very charming potentate
of the local pulpit. I was driven to my meet-
ing in a big Packard car ( a gift of the congre-
gation, my host informed me) with a liveried
chauffeur at the wheel. I don’t think I would
have reacted so strongly against this kind of
life if I hadn’t been reading Savotorelli’s Life
of St. Francis on the way down and was iu-
clined to look at the world through the httle
brother’s rather than my own eyes.

To object to this kind of luxury for ministers,
and not voice the same objection in regard to
the standards of hving among laymen, may
seem to involve us in a moral dualism. But I
am no longer afraid of duahsm. We might well
have more of it. It AviH be a long while before
we can convince laymen of the spiritual imph-
cations in standards of hving in a civilization
which knows of no other way to give a man
a sense of achievement than to let him adver-
tise it by outward show. But ministers ought
to know better.

Furthermore there is a moral peril in accept-

OF A TAMED CYNIC

213

ing the largess of men to whom you are trying
to minister. It is not that they try to take con-
scious advantage of your sense of gratitude,
but that such dependence upon their generosity
creates a psychological hazard against honest
presentation of the truth. Of course it is prob-
ably true that men who receive these excessive
benefactions are usually too tame to need tam-
ing. Innocuous virtue is always more charming
and more hable to prompt a generous affection
than the kind which raises disquieting ques-
tions.

Then too, ministers who can preach the gos-
pel of Jesus in our kind of civilization without
making anyone uncomfortable deserve an auto-
mobile for the difficult feat. And they need one
to compensate them for that lack of spiritual
vitality which makes the performance of the
feat possible. Most of these modern appurte-
nances are toys which appeal to childlike peo-
ple. When we sacrifice the adventure of trying
to maintain an inner moral integrity, we are
bound to seek for compensating thrills and to
find them in our mechanical toys.

But all this may be the voice of jealousy. I
love nothing so much in the realm of physical
pleasures as the sense of power which comes
from “stepping on the gas” when ensconsed in
a big car.

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

214

1928

Spoke today at the Jewish temple in . The

more I make contact with the Jews the more I
am impressed with the superior sensitiveness of
the Jewish conscience in social problems. I have
yet to find a Christian men’s group that can sur-
pass and few to equal the intelligent interest of
a Hebrew group in the economic and social
issues of the day. I do not say that there is not
in privileged Jewish groups more moral com-
placency than is compatible with their avowed
devotion to the Hebrew prophets, but there is
at least a considerable appreciation of the genius
of prophetic religion and some honest effort to
apply the prophetic ideal to fife.

I am afraid that the individualistic traditions
of Protestantism, and perhaps also the strong
Pauline strain in Protestant theology, have ob-
scured the social implications of Jesus’ gospel
much more than is the case in Jewish religion.

I am not sure that the religious life in the Jewish
temple is always as obviously vital as it is in
many Christian churches, but what there is of it
seems to me to be directed much more astutely,

OF A TAMED CYNIC 21$

at least from the social viewpoint, than in our
groups.

The Jews are after all a messianic people, and
they have never escaped the influence of their
messianic, or iE you will, their utopian dreams.
The glory of their religion is that they are really
not thinking so much of “salvation” as of a saved
society.

2i6

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928

The way Mrs. bears her pains and awaits

her ultimate and certain dissolution with child-
like faith and inner serenity is an achievement
which philosophers might well envy. I declare
that there is a quality in the lives of unschooled
people, if they have made good use of the school
of life and pain, which wins my admiration
much more than anything you can find in effete
circles. There is less of that whining rebellion
against life's fortunes, less morbid introspection
and more faith in the goodness of God. And that
faith is, whatever the little cynics may say, really
ultimate wisdom.

Mrs. has had a hard life, raised a large

family under great diflBculties, is revered by her
children, respected by her friends, and she has
learned to view the difficult future with quiet
courage as she surveys the painful and yet
happy past with sincere gratitude. She thanks
me for praying with her and imagines that I
am doing her a favor to come to see her. But
I really come for selfish reasons — because I
leave that home with a more radiant faith of

OF A TAMED CYNIC

217

my own. My confidence in both man and God
is strengthened.

It is the quality in that woman’s life that
seems to me to be dissipated in the modem day,
for all our progress. Perhaps we will work out
something comparable to it some day in a
highly disciplined culture. But as we lose the
moral fibre of the generation of pioneers and
wait for the discipline of a generation of moral
aristocracy, it is ordained that we should wander
through this present world where life is too
comfortable to have the tragic nobility which
our fathers had and too chaotic to disclose the
charms which come from a great cultural and
moral tradition.

2i8

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928

Here is a pastor singing himself to sleep. He
writes: “Business men who attend church have
sense enough to go out and run their business as
Christians without the minister interfering with
the technique. M'any of the most spiritual and
influential ministers I know never deal directly
with pohtics, industry or reform.” It is true of
course that a minister can’t offer expert advice
on the detailed application of Christian princi-
ples to specific fields. But neither can he assume
that principles get themselves automatically ap-
plied in the world’s complexities.

One of the most fruitful sources of self-decep-
tion in the ministry is the proclamation of great
ideals and principles without any clue to their
relation to the controversial issues of the day.
The minister feels very heroic in uttering the
ideals because he knows that some rather dan-
gerous immediate consequences are involved
in their apphcation. But he doesn’t make the
apphcation clear, and those who hear his words
are either unable to see the immediate issue in-
volved or they are unconsciously grateful to
the preacher for not belaboring a contempo-

OF A TAMED CYNIC 210

raneous issue which they know to be involved
but would rather not face.

I have myself too frequently avoided the spe-
cific application of general principles to con-
troversial situations to be able to deny what
really goes on in the mind of the preacher when
he is doing this. I don’t think I have always
avoided it, and when I haven’t I have invariably
gotten into some difficulty. Nobody challenges
principles.

Like the diplomats, the average man always
accepts the gospel “in principle,” and then pro-
ceeds to emasculate it by a thousand reserva-
tions. I know we can’t be expert on eveiy tech-
nical problem involved in modem industrial and
national civilization. But the ministers who make
a virtue of their pious generahties are either
self-deceived or conscious deceivers.

220

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928 ■

I

I am glad to hear of the new honors which I

have come to Bishop M' . He seems to me to

be the most glorious figure in American church
life. To have a philosopher, prophet and states-
man all roUed into one, and to have that one
achieve a pecuhar eminence in our religious fife |
is a clear illustration of how the richest char-
acter is achieved when various, seemingly in-
compatible, tendencies and functions are fused
in one personality. |

Philosophers are not usually prophets. They |
are too reasonable and circumspect to create or
preserve the prophetic vision. The wise man is
too capable of balancing the truth, to which he
ought to be loyal, with some other truth with
which it is in conflict. Thus he involves himself
in the endless antinomies of intellectualism.

This philosopher is enough of a Christian to
escape this fate. But he has another hazard to
overcome; for he is a statesman. For years he
has carried heavy responsibihties as a church
leader; and it is always more difficult for a
responsible leader, tied to an organization, to
speak bravely than an irresponsible prophet.

OF A TAMED CYNIC

221

Yet he has accomplished it. Here is a viadica-
tion of the power of the Christian liEe. Here is
a Thomas Aquinas and an Innocent HI and
something of a Francis all under one hat. He
is not as much of an absolutist as Francis, of
course; and his power is not as great as that of
Innocent. But his learning would compare
favorably with that of Aquinas, and bke the
great medieval philosopher, he has combined
the study of metaphysics with that of social
economy.

Strange that while I am so critical of bishops
my greatest hero should be a bishop and that,
while I call myself an anti-puritan, that hero
should be a Methodist bishop. So life defies oiu
prejudices smd generalizations.

222

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK

1928

I always thought I was a fairly brutal realist,
but I am beginning to suspect that the whole
thing is a pose to hide the sentimental preacher.
At any rate now that the time has come to sever
my connections with the church I find it almost
impossible to take the step. There is nothing
quite like the pastoral relationship. I would
almost be willin g to sacrifice the future for the
sake of staying here and watching the lovely
httle kiddies grow up, and see the young boys
and girls that I have confirmed blossoming into
manhood and womanhood. There must be some-
thing bogus about me. Here I have been preach-
ing the gospel for thirteen years and crying,
“Woe unto you if all men speak well of you,”
and yet I leave without a serious controversy
io the whole thirteen years.

It is almost impossible to be sane and Chris-
tian at the same time, and on the whole I have
been more sane than Christian. I have said what
I believe, but in my creed the divine madness
of a gospel of love is qualified by considerations
of moderation which I have called Aristotelian,
but which an unfriendly critic might call oppor-

OF A TAMED CTNIC

223

tunistic. I have made these qualifications be-
cause it seems to me that without them the
Christian ethic degenerates into asceticism and
becomes useless for any direction of the affairs
of a larger society.

I do not say that some one ought not to un-
dertake an ascetic revolt against civilization.
Certainly there would be a peace in it which
no one can find who tries to adapt the princi-
ples of love to a civilization built upon the drive
of power and greed. Those of us who make
adjustments between the absolute ideal of our
devotion and the necessities of the immediate
situation lack peace, because we can never be
sure that we have our adjustment at the right
place.

Every moral position which has left the abso-
lute basis is in danger of becoming a rationaliza-
tion of some selfish purpose. I am not uncon-
scious of the fact that my tendency to criticize
others so severely for their alleged rationahza-
tions and hypocrisies springs from my own sense
of insecurity.

I persevere in the effort to combine the ethic
of Jesus with what might be called Greek cau-
tion because I see no great gain in ascetic experi-
ments. I might claim for such a strategy the full
authority of the gospel except that it seems to
me more hkely to avoid dishonesty if one admits

224 LEAVES FKOM THE NOTEBOOI

that the principle of love is not quahfied in the
gospel and that it must be qualified in othe]
than the most intimate human associations
When one deals with the aflEairs of a civilization
one is trying to make the principle of love
effective as far as possible, but one cannol
escape the conclusion that society as such i<
brutal, and that the Christian principle ma}
never be more than a leaven in it.

There has never been a time when I have nol
been really happy in the relationships of tht
parish ministry. The church can really be a
community of love and can give one new confi-
dence in the eflBcacy of the principles of brother-
hood outside of the family relation. The ques-
tions and qualms of conscience arise when one
measures the church in its relationships to
society, particularly to the facts of modern
industry. It is at this point where it seems to
me that we had better admit failure than to
claim any victory. The admission of failure may
yet lead to some kind of triumph, while any
premature confidence in the victory of a Chris-
tian ethic will merely obfuscate the conscience.

Modern industry, particularly American in-
dustry, is not Christian. The economic forces
which move it are hardly qualified at a single
point by really ethical considerations. If, while
it is in the flush of its early triumphs, it may

OF A TAMED CYNIC 225

seem impossible to bring it under the restraint
of moral law, it may strengthen faith to know
that hfe without law destroys itself. If the
church can do nothing else, it can bear witness
to the truth until such a day as bitter expe-
rience will force a recalcitrant civilization to
a humility which it does not now possess.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr is Vice-president of the faculty
of Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
Since 1928, he has been Professor of Christian Ethics
and Philosophy of Religion at the Seminary. He
was horn in 1892 in Wright City, Missouri, where
his father was an Evangelical Church pastor, ^^fter
preparing for the ministry at Eden Theological
Seminary in St. Louis, he studied at Yale, taking
his R.D. degree in 1914 and his M.A. degree in
1915. After serving as pastor of a struggling church
in Detroit (which, incidentally, provided the occa-
sion for his viniting the present work) he joined
the faculty of Union The^'lcgical Seminary.
his books are An Interpretation of Christian Ethks,
Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Nature and
Destiny of Man, Faith and History, Christian Real-
ism, and The Self and the Dramas of History.

Hunt Library

Carnegie Institute of Technology
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania